Reformatting laptop

[saxy_jag]

I have Dell Latitude laptop that I bought secondhand/refurbished from the local green shop. It came with Windows 2K installed even though the label on it says it was designed for XP.

The other week, it crashed and I couldn't rescue it so I had to re-install Windows. The 2K disc is broken, so I did an XP install from a disc I already own. Now I seem to have very little spare disk space (it's a total 18GB and around 2GB is still free. Also, although I could see the various programmes (e.g. MS Office), every time I tried to open a document with one of them, it just says there isn't enough space to open the programme. I've since uninstalled MS Office, but other, smaller programmes are giving me the same message. I suspect it's because there's still W2K stuff on the hard drive that doesn't need to be there, thus taking up space.

Someone has suggested I do a 'clean install' of XP, which I assume means a reformat. I'm happy to do this and understand that all the drivers and software will need to be reinstalled.

What I'm wondering is, if all the 'pre-crash' software is still there but inaccessible, will my old documents be somewhere (can't locate them at all)? If they're lost, they're lost, and there's nothing I can do about that, I know, but it would be nice to be able to rescue them if I can.

Maybe this will teach me to back up more regularly in the future.

[TTG]

Use search on each hard drive for each file type. For example, search for *.doc for all documents. Copy them to an external drive. Not sure what you mean by "cannot locate them all".

Yes, select format when installing xp.

[saxy_jag]

Thanks TTG.

By 'cannot locate' - I mean that I can find all my 'old' programmes in Windows Explorer, as well as my old desktop shortcuts and some favourites, even though Windows keeps telling me I haven't enough disc space to open them. I cannot, however, see any folders that are likely to contain documents (other than the ones I've created since the crash).

But I will try the search you've suggested.

Thanks again.