Formatting your hard drive to fix something is like burning down your house because the door doesn't shut properly. Sure, when you rebuild it you can make sure the door fits this time, but there's got to be an easier way, right ? Formatting the hard disk is the advice you get from the fake 'experts', it's completely useless and overkill in 99.95% of all cases. So what does the REAL expert (i.e. me
) say ?
Well, reinstalling windows has its time and place. I'm pretty sure I can fix problems like that without even reinstalling, let alone reformatting. I have until now. I'm still running the same Windows XP install from the days I bought it the first week it was out. However I know how difficult it can be to find an elusive error if you already tried all kinds of drivers, so that only a reinstall might solve it. If your windows installation is fairly old (> 1 year), it might even speed up your system by reinstalling it. But you don't need to reformat, not ever, unless you want to change the size of your partitions and you haven't got Partition Magic.
So slowly back away from the format command and let's just reinstall. I was going to ask which OS you've got (ALWAYS mention this when you want help with an error) but I can deduce that you're using XP. Things are a bit more tricky to reinstall there. Normally I suggest booting to DOS and deleting the windows/program files directory (after first copying all files in those two directories that you still need). This wipes out almost all of windows without reformatting. In XP and especially when you have a NTFS partition with windows on it, it may be more difficult. So what I suggest is that you insert your windows XP cd and boot from it to start the install. You'll get an option to repair the installation, take that one. The repair installation might fix your problem, if it doesn't it might be better to use a fresh install. When it asks if you want to keep your previous settings, answer NO, it's the only way to get rid of old errors. When you have done all this, come back and tell me. I'm really good at this kind of stuff, but the problem is of course that I'm so good that I haven't reinstalled XP ONCE, so I'm having kinda vague memories about the install procedure, so don't yell if the install says something else.