Okay, so I dont know exactly what is up with my computer but basically its all messed up. A good deal of my programs don't work after I run them once so i have to reinstall them every time i want to use them (iTunes, SmartFTP client, Propellerhead Reason, Ahead Nero). Also, sometimes when I boot up my computer, the taskbar, start button, and icons don't load up and I need to end the 'explorer.exe' process and manually restart it. Then after going to the start menu then 'all programs' once or twice, the menu just freezes up and closes without letting me choose a program. At first I thought that my windows install was corrupt or something but then I remembered that none of this started happening until after I reformated my drives. Today I just finished reformating again and i'm having the same problems the programs not wanting to work. I would love any help (hopefully its not my hardware...)

so you have reformated and on a brand new fresh install you still have the same old problems?

yeah. [sad face]

before you format and install, boot to xp recovery councel and type fixmbr then format and install xp and see what happens

what will this do? Is there any way I can test if this is a hardware issue?

Well, i'm not too sure but perhaps your hard drives are some how damaged. You could use a hard drive utility like "HDtune" to test your hard drive for errors, but I think you don't have errors if you can start windows. Maybe the windows xp copy you are installing from is botched.

na his problems are most defenitly software problems, I'm willing to bet he has a virus

Then that would be some virus that survives a reformat, it seems those viruses are a rarity

if he really did reformat and is still getting this performance issue and if it was one of those viruses that lives like in the boot sector or whatever its called then writing 0's to the entire drive and then formatting should fix it, but i highly doubt its a virus if is after he reformmated

lots of viruses leave in the memory, formating to fix everything is a myth.

fixmbr zeros out the sectors which is why I asked him to run that command

The only way to ensure a virus is gone with a reformat is to power the computer off and unplug it for a few seconds... then plug it back in, power up and boot from the CD first... do NOT let it boot from the hard drive.

Then, once you've formatted, the virus should be gone. (Provided it's not a boot sector or CMOS virus)

doesn't that mean that its not teh only way to ensure a virus is gone?

the only way to make sure a virus is gone is to zero out the sectors then full format