Reformat the hard drive????

[LP2468]

OK, I've been at this computer all weekend and still don't know what's wrong. Here's the history, I'll try to be brief-haha

Have a 486 generic, 20mg ram, very small hard drive (202 mg I think) with Win95 using AOL 4.0 16-bit version---

All was well until a few weeks ago when I needed a 32 bit version of AOL to do something with Real Player, so I installed AOL 3.0 32 bit and uninstalled 4.0. Had been wanting to reinstall 4.0 anyway due to some damaged files, so that was ok. Few weeks later I tried to go back to AOL 4.0 and cannot get onto the web, screen won't even change, IE says it can't find the address, etc. CAN get onto the web with 3.0, but once there can't X out of site, all screens turn white and everything freezes up, have to reboot. Can also minimize AOL and get to web with IE maybe 1 out of 15 tries while on 3.0, otherwise same message as with 4.0, can't find address aol.com.

Been on the phone with the AOL techs all weekend long, no help (HAHAHA now that's a surpise). They keep telling me it must be my system, damaged files, etc. I've tried everything imaginable to fix this, but no luck. I don't want to use AOL 3.0, my machine is slow enough. I haven't a clue at this point why the AOL 4.0 won't connect me to the web, why IE says it can't find the address. I've done so many things that I thought maybe they were right, time to reformat the hard drive, start fresh. I don't know how to uninstall Windows though, did it before by accident--but that's another story. Can anyone walk me through this getting rid of Windows and reinstalling it? Unless anyone has any other ideas why I'm having this web access problem....

Thanks for reading, feel free to email me if you can help....seeing as how I never know if I'll be able to get back to the web or not

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[Static-X]

First I think your current problem is that AOL 3 16bit perhaps changed your networking. Perhaps replacing your 32 Winsock TCP/IP etc with a 16-bit alternative. The when you went to 4.0 32bit the 16bit networking components remain. Mind you this is only a theory. You may try My Computer>Control Panel Networking uninstall all networking protocols AOL adapter and TCP/IP the reload AOL 4.
If you want to format and start anew do this
1. Right click My Computer Properties and right down you hardware information
video cards brand sound card MODEM etc and download drivers have them on a floppy.
2. Make yourself a boot floppy from a 98 machine if you can get your hands on one or 95 in My Computer>Add New Software>Startup disk
3. BACKUP EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO KEEP!
4. I assume (I should never do this) you have either Windows 95 floppy disk or a CDROM to reinstall with.
5. test your boot floppy and make sure your CD-ROM works in DOS before proceeding
6 at the command prompt type fdisk /mbr no message will be returned
7 format c: /u
8 change to c drive and make the following directory structure
c:\windows\options\cabs
9. from your Windows CD or floppy copy all .cab file or floppy disk into that directory
10 once copied to the directory change to it and type setup
11 you should be able to handle it from here