Formatting without losing your files?

Nope unless you save or transfer them to another drive.....

No. Part of the purpose of formatting is to delete files. So, what do you really want to do? Why are you looking to "format"?

If you're looking to "clean-up" the harddrive as regular performance maintenance, then check out this article:

Put your PC maintenance routine on autopilot

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/maintenan...

if your computer is totally corrupted or windows cannot successfully load.... try to reset your computer and press the f8 key... you can see choices there try to choose startwindows normally if still does not work .... do the same thing again and choose another option the safe mode... once you enter windows try to look for your important files .... and backup it to a usb flahsdrive.. after that you can now format your harddrive without loosing files on it

if u don't want to lose your file then it's not called "formatting" but u can always transfer your files to other drive. if u cannot access the window anymore use the boot setup.

You can change the format from FAT/FAT32 to NTFS, in Windows XP.

In other cases, you should copy the files to someplace else.

formatting wipes the hard disk clean depending on the OS you can do a "repair install"

Yes.. but your going to hvae to either move them to a USB, or move them to anohter drive (eg Move files to D Drive and reformat C Drive..)

only if you have a restore sector and leave the files intact and untouched in it.

no thats not possible