Archive & Install - Now need help restoring printers!

I need to do an Archive & Install of OSX before I potentially send my PowerBook in for repair (to eliminate "everything") and have a couple of questions about the process:

Will I have to reinstall applications in the Applications folder and if not, will their preferences be preserved?

Will I need to reconfigure Mail and re-import old messages?

Will my "Documents", "Music", "Movies" and "Pictures" folder remain untouched?

Will other user accounts be affected? If so, in what way?


Cheers for the help

P.S. I really don't want to do an A&I, but nor do I want to shell out over £200 for a new upper case if I can avoid it by doing an A&I

 

So does it just overwrite the system folder then?

 

So I just drag & drop the applications/documents/etc folders out of the "Previous System Folders" folder?

Is it advisable to drag & drop my entire ~/Library/ folder out of the "Previous System Folders" into my "new" ~/ Folder, or is it best to manually rebuild the prefs in each app?

 

Excellent! Will let you know how it goes, once my parents post my installer DVD up to me.

I also have a backup on a firewire hard drive, should things go horribly pear-shaped.

 

I've done the A&I preserving the user & network settings, etc. But, some icons on my desktop (all .doc files - Word) have a generic blank icon, not the standard MS Word icon. How can I fix this?

 

Re: my last post: a reboot seems to have fixed the icon issue

Ideally I would have done a clean install, but as I'm at university and in the middle of loads of coursework, I don't have time to do that (I do have a backup FW hard drive so I keep everything backed up). Trouble is, as it doesn't appear the re-install has solved my issue, it looks like I'm going to be without my computer for over a week

Haven't noticed any issues with Photoshop yet...

 

How can I restore my installed printers, so as I can print again?

Nothing's showing up in the "Choose a printer" menus or in the Printers pane in system prefs?

I have 3 Epson printer configurations - one of which I need pretty urgently! I don't have the installer discs with me (I'm at uni), but I still have the "Previous Systems" folder.