I formatted my HD by booting up with my recovry cd having copied all my files and programs. Does formatting get rid of everything including any viruses and all the regirty information, so for example if I have a program that has 5 days of 30 days trial left will it still have 5 days left? Should I just copy programs such as Mozilla and my ftp program directly to my HD or should they be downloaded and installed again? I guess I can do either, but is there a difference? Btw, can someone tell me where I can find my old Mozilla bookmarks? I copied the whole file to my memory stick. I have also copied My Documents as a file, so is it still somewhere on my memory stick? Thanks for you answers.
formatting will completely erase your HD. Providing there are no viruses etc on the recovery disc, that will restore your pc to how it originally was. I would use restore disc, install an antivirus and scan any program that you have backups of before installing them as they could be infected.