Most painless re-installation method

[Kieren Diment <kieren@mailandnews.com>]

I have had some rather bad disk corrpution (laptop battery failed on
me I think).  The easiest way for me to
fix it as far as I can see is to re-install as there are a few key
applications that don't work..   I have a root partition
and a /home partition.  Only the /root partion is affected.  I can
back up /etc which seems for the most part unaffected by the
corruption.

Can anyone suggest the most painless way to do this.  I can back up
/etc onto /home.

Thanks in advance

Kieren