I want to format my compaq presario sr2173wm. how do I do this

If you have a recovery cd ,put the cd in cdrom press f12 or f11 it will reinstall the whole software and drivers and everything.this is express recovery, otherwise boot from cd-rom and format the system and install all the softwares

You can go to your DOS, or go to run, type cmd. and go where it says C: if you are not there already and type C:/format or C:/format.exe and that should work or you could also insert an operating system disk and boot from disk and reformat the drive that way.

Hope this helps.