On 17 Nov 2006 at 17:41, loverboy rxxx wrote:

> .. would like.. to know.. some notes on how to format a  computer 

  One does not format a computer.  One formats some particular piece of 
media, such as a disk, to prepare it to receive and hold data -- the exact 
preparation done will depend on what kind of media it is:

Floppy disk -- lay down tracks and sectors, and initialize the File 
Allocation Table.

CD-R -- Some burning programs use "format" as the term for whatever they do 
to prepare a disk for writing, especially ones that allow you to add more 
files later.

Hard disk -- A "low-level" format lays down tracks and sectors; these days, 
that is usually done by the manufacturer and no longer needs to be done by 
the user.  More commonly, a "format" is done to create an initialized 
(empty) file system (FAT32 or NTFS have different details) on a drive 
partition.

  If you format the partition that the OS is on, yoiur computer can no 
longer boot from there.  Most modern OS installation CDs include provision 
for formatting a partition and installing a fresh copy of the OS to it.  
Maybe that's what you want to do?

David Gillett

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml