So I pretty much need to reformat. I've run stinger and avg and mcafee (not the best I know) and found nothing. I've run CCleaner and fixed everything, but my comp is still sluggish and has now started blue screening during WoW, I can't actually see a blue screen because it goes all rainbow colored and my headphones start screeching and it reboots.

The last two times I had to reformat I just took it in somewhere for 80 bucks and they did the reinstall and checked for other problems.

The big problem for me is finding drivers I need or what even needs drivers. Another thing is one of my hard drives is dead and it keeps asking for checkdisk on it. I don't know what to do with it! Just take it out? Or do settings need to be changed? It's just a spare drive.

So if anyone who does lots of reformatting could lay out what things I need to find and how to find them. Online searching only gives me basic steps on how to reformat.

How old is the machine, and what OS is it running?

It's barely over a year old, running Win XP. Though after all this happened it the video card decided to die. Sooooo, I have no clue if that can cause the sluggishness that I was experiencing after I installed some programs (updated AVG from 8.0 to 8.5) or installing Runes of Magic. Those were the two programs I installed when my computer started being sluggish. Programs would load slowly, My Documents/Pictures etc would take like 5 seconds to load.

At least I think the card died. The BIOS/boot up screen is pixelated/blocky and my resolution is stuck at like 640xwhatever. I tried to install new drivers and it said it was unable to detect any devices.

yeah, this is your card dying and giving you basic VGA support.

To be honest, it could be a heat issue. Do you have a PC health monitor option in your BIOS?

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Well, windows xp formatting is pretty simple. Just boot from your XP cd and follow through the menus to reformat/reinstall windows.

Most devices have default drivers windows will load and then you can just go to the manufacturer's website to download the latest set. If it's a slave drive that is dead, you can just unplug and remove it.

Are all of your fans still working? It could be a heat issue. If you didn't mess with your card's drivers and it's locked to a low resolution it's probably hosed. That or the motherboard port it's plugged in to, but that's far more unlikely. If the PC is that new it might still be under warranty?

I put in a new video card and unhooked the bad drive. The sluggishness is gone too! No need to reformat. Woo!