If you use your computer long enough, then it's bound to become fairly sluggish after a while.

More often than not, sluggish responses from your computer can be solved by a myriad of ways, the most extreme of which is formatting it.

But if you've exhausted all other options, then formatting your PC might be the only answer left to you. Here's how with Windows XP...

The preparation steps:

1. Send your wife/hubby and kids away for the weekend, because you're going to need a lot of time to reinstall all your software and your frustration levels might become very high.
2. Rent a couple of good movies and have them on standby for the long downloading periods you're going to have to sit through while installing all the updates for Windows XP.
3. Make yourself a cup of coffee, do a couple of push-ups and take a seat in front of your PC.
4. Now, backup all your files onto CD's/DVD's.
5. Once you're sure you've backed up all your files, take a deep breath and move on to the formatting steps.

Time for Destruction Derby:

1. Insert your Windows XP installation disc in your CD Rom drive, and reboot.
2. A message will appear asking you whether you want to repair your existing installation. Press Esc to skip this option.
3. Select the current partition upon which Windows is installed and press "D" to delete it. Press "L" to confirm deletion. Repeat this step until all your partitions are deleted (unless you want to keep some of them).
4. You now have to create a new partition. Select the unpartitioned space and press "C" to create a new partition.
5. Type in the size of the partition you would like to use (in megabytes) and press "ENTER". If you want to use all of the available disc space for the partition, then just press "ENTER".
6. Select your partition and press "ENTER".
7. Now choose the format option you want to use. If you're not sure, use the 'quick format' NTFS option.
8. Take a sip of that coffee you made and wait for the format process to finish.
9. When it's finished, follow the onscreen instructions to re-install Windows XP.
10. Go make yourself another cup of coffee while you wait for the setup to finish.
11. After Windows XP has been installed, it's now time to reinstall all your software and download all the Windows updates. Watch a couple of movies while you wait.

And that's it! Easy as pie... well, sort of...

(For more comprehensive information, please visit Microsoft's help centre. For information on how to go back to Windows XP after having upgraded to Windows Vista, click here.)