[CigarJohnny]

Before I'd format the drive and lose everything I would first try just reinstalling overtop of the current install. If something got deleted accidentally or mysteriously it might put it back in order. If it is something in the registry that got hosed then it won't help and you'd be better off formatting and reinstalling from scratch. It's worth a try though if it would save you from wiping, reloading, and reinstalling all your programs.

If you do end up reformatting and reinstalling everything, do yourself a favor if you have a big enough harddrive. Create a second partition to be used as a backup partition (a couple gigs would probably work well enough). Better yet would be an old smaller harddrive. Do the reinstall of the OS and all your critical programs (like MS Office) and fully patch and update it with current security fixes and drivers. Once you have it working properly use Norton Ghost (let me know if you need a copy, it's very small) and create a compressed image of the OS partition and store that image file on the second partition or spare harddrive. Once you do that you can continue installing the non-critical software at your leisure.

Should things go kablooey on you again it will only take you a few minutes to run Norton Ghost and have a fresh install of your PC in freshly installed and configured state with all your critical applications pre-installed. I don't know about you but when I wipe and reload my PC it takes me days to get it back to where I can use it again. This will make that whole process shrink to about 5 minutes work. It is the best thing I ever did for myself. Good luck!