I need to reformat my hard drive, but don't know how to do it. I have a 400Meg. hard drive that has been compressed with "DriveSpace." I am running Win95, which I installed from disks in the A drive as an upgrade. I still have the Win95 upgrade disks, and the Win 3.1 disks from before. How do I go about reformatting, and how do I get up-and-running again afterwards??

Best advice is to get a new larger HD, use the old one for a slave and don't use Drive Space. Between the small HD and drive space, you'll have problems soon. If you still want to do it, write down all the current settings for your server, e-mail, internet, modem, sound card, etc. Save anything you can't lose to floppies like personal data, love letters, etc. Boot on the Win95 boot floppy and at the prompt type fdisk. Delete the active and any other partitions. Create a primary partition, use the whole drive, then make it active. Reboot and type format C:\s Reboot with the win95 install disc and install like you did the last time. you might have to shove in a Win3.1 disc or two if it asks for it. After Win95's installed, install your hardware and software like before. I might have forgot a few things so repost if needed. Disable virus protection in the bios setup if you know how to do that. Take all the cards out except for the video card until after Windows is in.

What Bruce said to begin with is your best bet. I have had to waste a lot of expensive time for my clients because they didn't want to purchase a new, larger drive. At the very least... buy a new copy of 95. You are assuring yourself problems using the upgrade.

How do i reformat my computer, i have a penII procesor 333mhz running windows 98

Thanks to Bruce and Jeff for advice on reformatting my hard drive. Your point about my hard drive being way too small is well taken. My intention is to buy a new computer with an 8gig hard drive soon (like tomorrow)! My reason for wanting to reformat the 400 meg hard drive is so I can give my old computer to my parents who are retired. I believe that's a good way for them to get into going on line, without the initial cost of a new computer. Who better to be surfing the web than retired people who have free time to do such things? Plus! It gets them out in the world, so to speak! I've had the thing since about 1994, and there's lots of junk and some conflicts on the hard drive now. Thanks again my friends :-) I will let you know how I make out with the reformatting, which I won't attempt until my new computer is up-and-running!

If you're going to get a new pc, do your parents a favor and get a larger HD for them and use the 400Meg as a slave in your new one. To Jeff Waters- boot on the Win98 floppy and type format C: at the prompt and it'll wipe the HD clean as a whistle. Oh yeah, you'll lose all info so back up imprtant stuff first.