First, I'd like to thank all who have answered previous questions of mine, both through the list and personally. You've been very helpful, and have made my 'computer time' more enjoyable and productive -- and helped lessen anxiety...

I've had my computer since November '97. Certain programs have been acting strange, and there are quirks that I have a feeling could be solved by reinstalling from scratch in a more disciplined manner. I would like to reformat and run Fdisk, but have been putting it off out of fear that I would get stuck somewhere during the process and be left with an unusable computer. I am familiar with the guides on NOSPIN, but I still feel unsure. For example, which comes first -- the formatting or partitioning procedure?

And what about drivers? I don't have the original disks or CDs for my HD, Motherboard, BIOS, CPU, or CD-ROM. Do I need to try and find and download all the drivers first, before reformatting or running fdisk? Is there some program which can show exactly what is in the computer, including model numbers? For example, I tried finding a driver for my HD on the Quantum website, but couldn't find a match. What to I need to prepare beforehand, and where do I look for it? What do I need to have the originals of, and what can I find on the Internet?

I have a Pentium P55C 166 MMX, AMI BIOS DMI Ver-2.0, Quantum Bigfoot CY HD 3.5GB, Cirrus Logic 5446 PCI with VPM 2MB, Windows 95 V 4.00.950r-7 Hebrew Enabled, 64MB RAM, USR 33.6K Internal Fax Modem.

TIA,
David

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