Reinstalling questions

[JaggedOne]

I upgraded to 8.04 and it broke my Ubuntu. I have decided to reinstall. I have never done this before with Ubuntu so I want to know how its going to work before I jump in. Here is my plan:

1. Back up my /home to an external drive (its not on a seperate partition.)
2. Install Ubuntu 8.04 over my old install. (not sure how to do that, any tips?)
4. (optional) Make a separate partition this time to copy my /home back to. If you could tell me how to do this that would be great cause I have no idea.
3. Copy my old /home over the new one.

Side question: Is any of this going to mess up my Windows XP partition?
Side question 2: Are there any new features or apps that I will overwrite when I copy my old /home over?

[Pumalite]

Install Ubuntu, go Manual,delete the old Ubuntu partitions. In that 'free space', make 2 'New' partitions:
10 GB for '/'
The rest for /home
Ignore /swap
The installer will do the rest.

[JaggedOne]

Awesome that pretty much sums up my questions about how to do it. The only two things I need to know are my two side questions. Will it mess up my XP install and will I lose any new features by overwriting my /home?

[Pumalite]

You have backup your stuff first. No. It will not mess up your XP.

[JaggedOne]

You have backup your stuff first. No. It will not mess up your XP.

Yea I'm gonna back up my old ubuntu /home to an external drive and then copy it back over once I install 8.04. What I want to know is if there are any new features in 8.04 that I will lose when I copy my old 7.10 /home back on top of my fresh 8.04 install.