diogenysos: Well i have Driver Max running on my XP system. It checks for Driver updates daily.
Also it keeps a copy of all your drivers on there system, which you can set to download if you do a fresh install as you say, THOUGH i have never tried to do that.
As for programs, surely you can just download the most up to date version ?
Funny enough, i am just about to do a fresh install of XP on here, and the one great pain is re-installing or the great software, maybe some bodkin should come up with a way of cloning the Program Files folder