well after 5 days of (not to put tooo fine a point on it) f**king my pc backwards through a hedge whilst doing about nine other things simulataniously to it i believe i now have a stable computer again, i have been through most of the general problems accosiated with a format and reinstall and am pleased to finally see the last of it (well untill i decide i need a good dose of stress and do it again)

the most iritating thing was in the end my motherboard being detected as an unknown device (now i thought this would cause all sorts of problems and be really obvious to find out... but as you guessed it wasnt) apparently my computer can run without half the drivers for its pci slots and agp slots and not even bat an eyelid, it took the good boys at dell tech support to help me fix this one and thankgod they didnt ask to see the warrenty on this,

i suppose i shall be asking old demonboy to tell me all my passwords and stuff again as i have proceeded to lose them all again, you would think i had learnt but nope i havnt learnt a thing.

so the end of my long and pointless story, i would claim to now be an authority on the finer points of format and reinstall but thats bollocks, i just make it up as i go and see what happens at the end, better go and re re re re re re re re re re re re install halflife and hope im not still banned from blueyonder servers, but thats another story altogether.........