Another laptop question.

Its okay, don't feel like that. We are not all knowledgeable about the things that we often encounter in our lives so you shouldn't feel down about being honest with what you don't know. Yeah, formatting and wiping your hard drive are the same.

yes, it is. I'm not sure which program is best for this. If you have an IBM there is a button you can push on your computer to take it back to the start. You are not an idiot, just uninformed on this matter, lol.

yes reforming well wiped out everything in your hard drive.

it is the same and you do not need a software to do that because your computer cna do that for you, if you want to reformat your laptop.do not forget to do your back up before formatting your PC. and all it's drivers.it would be of good practice if you do back up every now and then on a separate hard drive.

Yes it is the same thing... But if your CD/DVD player is not working... you won't be able to re-load anything on it. Because all your applications are on CD.

I have always termed reformatting to be when you erase everything, format the drive to FAT or NTFS (basically make it so you can put new files on)then put windows back on or other files on. when i wipe a drive i basically delete the partition and leave it. If I'm concerned about the data getting out i find a program to erase the data and over write it with something else unimportant. I cant remember the name of the program i liked really well a few months back (i wish i could cause i'd redownload it!)