Hi,

My system is running rather slow, and im thinking of formatting it so I can start fresh with new programs etc. The only thing is, Im not exactly an expert on it, so I was wondering what will this exactly do? Will it delete Windows and get rid of all my drivers? Will it completely set my computer to having nothing stored on it?

Im sort of confused

You'll need your Vista / XP disc and on there there are options to which you can choose to delete everything and start from scratch, and another one which lets you just reinstall windows, In your case you'd need to choose delete everything and start again.

I can't remeber the exact options, those are roughly what it is, I'm sure there's other ways of doing it too though..

ah ok thanks for that sam!

Usually, there's no need to do a full format, unless you've seriously screwed something up. Look at the startup menu in msconfig, and see how many apps are there. Non-essential apps running on startup will really slow you down. Look at the processes menu of task manager. Again, that will show you what's running in the background. Take a look at add/remove programs, and remove anything you don't use often (if you're like me, be absolutely merciless at this stage ). If it's still running slow, then possibly a fresh install is needed. But that covers the major slowdowns