I'll give that a try...One of the reasons I was questioning the need to do full format was, on my Dad's computer and my computer, the Antivirus, Symantec Endpoint Protection was not fully supported by win 7. I got the newest edition the other day which is supported and loaded it. It worked fine for me just loading over the top of the old one. My Dad ran into problems and it would not work. I forgot the error he was getting, but anyway, he tried to uninstall Symantec Endpoint Protection and reinstall the newer version...that did not work...so he decided to just reload windows. After windows reloaded, he tried to install Symantec Endpoint Protection and still got the same error.
He finally loaded Windows XP after doing a FULL Format, then did the custom install to get Windows 7 loaded and was able to load Endpoint Protection just fine. Who know, this was weird. I figured it was because Windows 7 didn't really format the the h/d first.