using Ghost 14 on Vista, swapping back to XP Pro

So I've used Ghost 14.0 to backup my C:/  which is only my OS (Vista 32 bit Home premium), and my D:/ (which is all of my applications).  I did this using the copy disc option.  All backups are on my external USB drive.

 

Vista is giving me lots of porblems (not with Ghost - with some other software that I want to run), and it looks like the only way around the problems are to revert to XP Pro.

 

If I do a clean install of XP, then load Ghost can I recover my applications from the backup or will I have to re-install them from scratch (I'm guessing the latter, but if I can recover all my applications from my previous backup I'd be very very happy).