Thanks Randy for your reply. You are talking to an old, retired rank amateur so I hope this makes sense. I tried the disk mgmt route but again, windows would not let me format over windows files. Understandable! Nor will it let me delete windows files. I understand win is just protecting itself. I've learned an important lesson: never copy win files to another drive. My pc is an Acer Aspire 4736z laptop, intel pentium processor 14500, 2.3 ghz, 800 mhz fsb, 14.0" HD led lcd, 2 GB Memory, 320 GB HDD. Here is where things get sticky: my OS is win 7 Ultimate but not original. I hope you will be understanding here because I had to use a copied version of the OS. I live on a tiny island here in the South Pacific. We don't have IT folks here, not even a PC store. It takes a full days travel time just to get to the mainland of Mindanao, so we do what we have to do. I say all that so you understand I cannot reload a fresh copy of win 7 but must reload the option that carries over all my files because I don't have the necessary codes to send to microsoft. So, since windows will not let me manipulate win files from inside windows and since I cannot reload a fresh copy, I get the sick feeling I must go to the mainland and replace my harddrive or buy an original win 7 disk. (which is what I should have done to begin with). I currently have nearly 500,000 extra windows files on my pc, half of which I don't need but I don't think windows differentiates between original win files and copies but protects them all equally.