Computer Problem

Hey guys - this is my problem.

I had some stuff qued up to download while I was at work.

I come home and there is a little yellow message box at the bottom of my screen where the windows update thing would be and where you get a message if you have new hardware.

Anyway, it says “could not save file blah.rar to destination drive, there may have been a problem with your network connection or your hard disk”

Well - I figured since I was having trouble with my Cable internet that was the problem. Well I try to access the drive (it’s partitioned - but the other partition on the same drive still works?) and it says “disk not formatted, do you wish to format”

Well that scares the crap out of me. So I restart and instead of it being it’s usual name it says “Local Drive” well when I right click on it to explore it takes forever and then comes up something like “illegal parameters” or something… when I tried it again it gave me the “Disk not formatted, do you wish to format”

What does this mean! Am I gonna have to format it - Did I loose everything that was on it (my o.s. is on another one thank god)

If I have to format do I have to take the other partition with it or just do that one? I have no idea guys - I am not good with this kind of hardware stuff. Can someone please help me?

p.s. If I do have to format it - how do I format just that one drive? I am using Windows XP Pro.

you are probably going to have to format
if you have an xp startup disk it should work
should…or a 98 startup. the startup disk will put enough system files on the machine to start up, read drives, do basic functions but thats about it…also format…its all you need to reformat a machine