i bought a ssd for my htpc running windows 7 and xbmc. before i swap it in there is there a way to keep all my setting and fanart etc? what folders do i need to keep? thx

You need some kind of imaging software. It takes an exact snapshot of your drive, and then copies that image to the new drive. If your current drive is either a Seagate or Maxtor, they have a free image utility. It's a lite version of Acronis True Image. You can also look for Norton Ghost.

what i mean is i want to keep just my XBMC settings. thx

That's probably a question best asked on the XBMC forums, but I'd say if you go to %appdata% and copy the XBMC folder, you'll have a good start.

everything you need to backup is in the userdata folder. If before and after your paths are the same this will be a seemless upgrade.

 

Alternatively export all you databse to individual files beside the media and then you can rescan very very quickly as you are not scraping the internet