[A CA Guy]

Hi, I was serious that older computers tend to run poorly after a few years.
F-disk is starting all over by reformatting the Hard Drive and reloading the operating system, your programs again and then bringing back your saved files, like email addresses, connection information, word files.... on and on.

You would need some neighbor with some modest knowledge to help you with this, but I bet that in the end will be what you need to do.

Could be it runs slow from some previously downloaded virus on the computer, it is quicker to reload everything after you take your files off the computer on a zip drive, thumbdrive, writable CD rom or a bunch of 3.5 disks.

You wipe it all out and do it again and it will run much better for sure.
But, get a knowledgeable neighbor to do all this for you as a favor. You could spend at least tens of dollars paying to have this done. You should find a neighbor or their kid who will do it for a dinner out, or movie coupons.

[texasflower]

Thanks for the info!

[ProudVet77]

Understand the logic of your view, and in the past it made a lot of sense. But if you blow away everthing with an FDisk you blow away every application and every upgrade that's ever been done. Not to mention the data.
If you care for you machine with a good virus scanner and run defrag once in a while, and a few other things you are much better off.

[Dinsdale]

In general you can just reinstall Windows to a new directory and get the same results. You'll still need to reinstall your apps but at least you don't need to 'write things down' to preserve the data.

Boot sector viri have'nt been a major problem sense DOS.