Compiz creating problems. Want to format disc and reinstall

I have struggled with this for 2 days and followed every post... and in the process got completed messed up

This is how it started -
My top and bottom panels were freezing up now and then... Could not open any application or system... The posts suggested Compiz was the problem and could be fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling... Tried that several different ways now - thru terminal, thru synaptics, thru all sorts of posts on ubunto requiring 10 step processes

I now have reinstalled compiz and all components but cant get desktop effects. Somewhere in the process, i lost of maximize minimize options on windows and i did command
metacity --replace... that apparently has gone in loop now and keep repeating following messages :
amit@amit-desktop:~$ metacity --replace
Window manager warning: Received a _NET_WM_MOVERESIZE message for 0x1c0001f (Saturday 2); these messages lack timestamps and therefore suck.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x4200058 (OpenOffice)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x4200271 (OpenOffice)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x4200271 (OpenOffice)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x4c008c3 (Find & Rep)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
and its still not done... after about 2 hours... if i close the terminal or reboot the machine, back to begining with no maximize/minimize/resize options

On the compiz reinstall itself, have legitimately tried to follow all searches including completely uninstall compiz, going thru synaptics package manager and trying completely remove and then reinstall... using all sorts of commands including adding software sources and so on... i also found out that compiz has some sort of program of bug called freewins that causes these issues...

Are these bugs or what ?
I am not a programmer... just a simple user who wanted to migrate from Vista onto something that looked good, was safer and worked better and was ofcourse free...

I guess i will give it 1 more shot before returning into clutches of microsoft...

I have backed up all my documents, pictures etc. But i have about 1000 nicely sorted emails in evolution. I also have music and playlists that i have created on banshee. Finally i am a little bandwidth starved so dont want to download 1GB emails + all updates etc all over again... Any way to preserve / back up the unrelated updates while repartitioning, reformatting and resinstalling ubuntu 8.10

Should i be looking to move to another more stable and userfriendly distro... have heard of mandriva and mint. But to be honest, what attracted me to ubuntu was teh 3D effects and if those are lost, then whats the point...
This will be my 2nd reformat and reinstall in 3 weeks of using linux... will be my last i guess...

My system config ... this is a new desktop... AMD X3 64Bit processor, Gigabyte GAMA 78GMs2H motherboard, 4GB RAM, 500GB single partition hard disk. Ubuntu 8.10.

Let me know and if you can make suggestions that are user friendly for a non technical user and are comprehensive that would be more appreicated