Please help me I'm about to give up

[Kaoss]

Ok get prepared for the whole story!

I bought a sony vaio pcv rs310 (my first personal comp)
and suspecting that the integrated 64mb intel video card would not suffice m
y gaming habits I shopped around and found a 128mb gforce fx5200 only to
realize that there was no agp slot :~( So then I got a motherboard.. then that
would not fit into my sony case so then I bought a case.

Pretty much I built my first computer.

Hence i have no warranty, no customer support, and alas no system recovery.

Now my specs are as follows:

windows xp home edition
pentium4 2.4 ghz
intel motherboard 865perl
1gb ddr ram
80 gb disc drive split into two partitions
C and D with only windows on the C drive
128mb gforce fx 5200
soundblaster audigy ls 24-bit

OK now on with the questions>>

1.how can I reformat my hard drive without deleting my windows
You know just like the recovery. When I try and use my boot discs
it says that sony recovery will not recover this computer because
it is not a sony computer.

What happened is that some game I bought put spyware
on my computer and and so I went into msconfig and did the
diagnostic startup deal. when my comp restarted all the
windows were like windows 95 or something and now it won't let
me copy files to cds. I'm really confused cause this has never happened!


I really do appreciate any help that you guys can give me and please.
if you feel that you can not give a serious and helpful reply
please leave the posts to those that have had
more experience with windows xp and all the
baggage that comes along with it.



Thanks alot.

 

[loaf]

i'll see what i can do. ..
you cannot format and still keep your windows installation. formatting means you delete everything and start over. i suggest putting everything you want in your d drive and format c. then install windows on the c drive again. the old looking windows can be due to having visual effects turned off. it actually helps out your performance a bit. to change it try right clicking on my computer-click the advanced tab at the top-then click performance settings. check to see if the very bottom item is checked. it's called 'use visual styles on windows and buttons.' as for spyware, thats easy to get rid of. either uninstall the game and anything else that came with it or get spybot and adaware. install and run spybot, get updates, scan your pc, then clean it all up. do the same with adaware. you can get them free at their respective websites. i dont know why it wont let you burn things. which burning software do you use?
i hope i was of some asistance.