Local Group Policy Editor - Way To Save Changes

I am rather new to using the "Local Group Policy Editor" and I was wondering if there is a way to be able to save your settings? To be able to load them on another machine in the future, or the same machine after a fresh OS install.

This will just be for a personal computer, not a network.

I am not really making a ton of changes, but I am looking into "hiding" many items in my control panel.
A simple check box GUI for this section would have been great, but the method of having to type in each item manually with the prefix "Microsoft." before each entry can be a bit tedious.
I can't see having to do this with each OS install, and I can't imagine a business / IT department doing all this manually.

Not sure if anyone knows of a method of saving this information, or the location of where Windows 7 saves this information?

EDIT:
Also, does anyone know of a way to "hide" 3rd party driver items that show up in the control panel?
Such as Intel Graphics / Audio Card / etc.
Some items let you hide them from the Control Panel, but still give you access in other locations, which I am hoping these items will, I would like to remove them from the Control Panel but still be able to access them from my taskbar, etc.

I don't want to create a new thread for this, but I am also looking for a setting in the GP Editor to remove the
"Search programs and file" text from Start Menu search field, if anyone knows of a simple, non 3rd party software way of doing this?

Anyways
Thank You for any help

@Brink
Thank You so much for your response, and for the continued help you have provided for me and many, many other members.
I have read through them a bit, and as always, two excellent tutorials. I have not tried the backup / restore GPE one yet, but I tried out the hiding of Control Panel items out and it solved my problem. Based on information I read elsewhere I was adding "Microsoft." prefix to my items as well as eliminating spaces, which worked for Microsoft based items, but not others.
Turns out, you don't have to do either (prefix / eliminate spaces), which also worked for my 3rd party items.

Thank You Again