Silly question time....... I have to many problems in current xp OS to mention in a list so im going to go for a clean reinstall. if possible 1st I have a recovery CD that came with the computer and i am wondering if this actually contains the xp operating system. this might seem like a really stupid question but i was told by someone that the recovery partition on the hard drive contained all the os and the disc was really just to activate this recovery. however after reading some postings on this fine web site i doubt this to be true. Can someone clear this up for me? 2nd there are three partitions on my hard drive at the moment one is hard disc the others are backup and recovery. what i would like to do is to formatt these and create 2 partitions 1st for the OS only and 2nd for other every day use. 3rd and finall question :-) fat32 or ntfs. one of my current partitions is fat32 and the others are ntfs. I understand there are security reasons and that ntfs is better but i cant understand why there would be a fat32 partition if this is the case... Ay ideas and if i do a clean reinstall can both partitions be ntfs only????? Sorry for the length hope you arent 2 bored and got this farr.......... thanks in advance bill

Explore the disk you have. My XP disk is 569 MB. If it has an i386 file on it I believe you have a XP disk. But when you say you have a recovery partition, that sounds like the OS is on it.

It could be helpful to know what PC you have, and then you can find out if you have an XP cd, or whether you should be using a different cd to access the recovery partition for the machine.

A 'recovery' disk so called generally has a prepackaged solution to setup the PC in an 'ex-factory' state. This you would expect should bring everything back to what it was when you opened the box. So it will repartition, reformat or whatever is necessary and also install the preinstalled XP ssytem. Think back to the day you first switched on the power. Again, read the users guide that came with the PC and it will give you full and clear instructions as to how to use the recovery disc [I presume it is a CD or Floppy + CD and not just a single floppy]. If you have a recovery disk, then it would be most likely that you have a Brand Name PC, so give their help desk a call if you can't work it out. They'll be happy to assist, it's their job after all.

The pc i am using is a medion microstar The CD i have is the medion product recovery-rom provided by medion AG the cd rom does have an i386 file. does this mean that it has the os? and if it does can i repartition the hard drive like in the question i posed earlier.