I think you were told to format the hard drive because the person just wanted to give you the easy way and not take a look at it. You can try things like RegClean from Microsoft (free) and see if that works....other than that you might want to explain your problems a little more to get a more precise answer. FDISK would in all essence format your hard drive but change or create hard drive partitions and sizes of them. I am a technician and do not take my computer to stores for help I do it all myself and never just say "format it". For the most part it's fixable....it's got to be completely unfixable to need to format it and thats after trying hundreds of different things. Format is the last resort and have not had to format my pc in years. I just transfer the harddrive's contents to new ones when I upgrade so basically it's the same software system that hasn't crashed to the point of being unfixable. I suggest you get a second opinion by taking it somewhere that will take the time to look at the problem. Until then don't erase it.