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seems most of the post i make here say the same thing.
this is a old trick i learned back in the good old days of OS2.
when you format or delete a partition with windows utilities you are not erasing the disk, you are removing the file protection (so windows knows it can write over that file's disk space again) or the partition information. when you reinstalled after a format you basically wrote over the old information that was still on the disk. now it is comming back to haunt you in the form of ghost files, xp is trying to read the old file info from the last install(or the old info is mixing in with the new).
this was not a problem with 9X systems running fat file systems.
ntfs systems need to have a (zero write/packet write/low level format) all three names mean the exact same thing, just depends on your utility. this erases everything on the disk, boot sector and all, which if you have a bootable xp disk, you can patition and format with it by following the easy install steps. do not use the quick mode of any of these utilities, the full packet write will take hours, and depends on the size of the drive(s). if you have a second computer, or a buddy, make sure they have a good virus scanner and slave your drive to it and grab the files you want to keep.
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