Hello pple, i intend to format my hard disk. hw do i go abt this in that i dont wanna lose som of my softwares like Encartar n they cannot be copied, what do i do?

Hmmm, your post reminds me of the lyrics to one of Tu Face's tracks

"no body wan pai but them wan go heaven"

Basically, when you format you HDD, your files/applications are gone!!!


BTW, whats wrong with the system that makes you want to format it? Most installed applications usually have files in "not so usual" locations, some tie itself to certain system parameters(GUIDs), create registry entries and so on.
Some however just dump the entire files for their operation in a single directory and load initialization values from *.ini and not registry. . . life made easy when it comes to copying to another system.

For the former, depending on the application, you may need to back up certain registry entries, locate and save a copy of its associated files(wherever they may be located on the system. . .) and then restore these back after the format has been done and then pray it works.

CASE:
if the reason you are formatting the system is because of a virus, depending on the virus, backing up files without knowing their infection state just might return the system back to the "pre-formatting" state.

My advice, get those applications again. . .ask around even if you aint got no copy, someone might just have it.

But try getting a different hard disk and get to the dir where the encarta is located then copy the file using wild card command like this.
Copy *.* file d:\ where you want to copy the file to for example lets say that the whole encarnta is in a folder then look for it using ms-dos you copy like this from the directory in c:/
c:\ *.* encarta d:\encarta.

But try getting a different hard disk and get to the dir where the encarta is located then copy the file using wild card command like this.
Copy *.* file d:\ where you want to copy the file to for example lets say that the whole encarnta is in a folder then look for it using ms-dos you copy like this from the directory in c:/
c:\ *.* encarta d:\encarta.

its probably 2 late that for now, but in future ENSURE YOU HAVE ALL YOUR APPLICATION INSTALLERS AND SERIAL NUMBERS BACKED UP to an external medium.