Hard disk space?

hi all. i've this computer at my office which came with pre installed xp with 4 partitions (all ntfs file system). recently, my system became slow and i decided to format the c drive and install fresh copy of xp sp2 (which our department owns). remember one thing i've installed xp into many other computers before this without any problem. now today i booted with the xp cd and gone thru the process till where we will be asked for choosing the partition on which we want to install. in this it showed only my c partition (ntfs) - . it didn't showed me the other 3 partitions (ntfs). i want to format the c drive and install os onto it but i wonder if i may loose my data on the d,e,f drives which are very important for us. there is no data in the c drive. how to do that and what is the problem with my hard disk.

You won't loose the data on the other drives unless you destroy them or use big magnets. It might be that your computer is not good enough to run the OS. If I need to format the drive I would try to take it out and format it at some body's else computer. Also try putting the OS on the C and see if it works. It might just be displaying the physical drive and not all of the individual parts. If you really need to use your computer then you should just install the software and worry about saving things later. The computer should do good with the multiple drives. To save just use one of the other drives.
-W