Thank-you for your answers! They were really informative, even given the limited info you had to go on.
Attached to this reply is the screenshot you asked for.
Also, since I am running WinXP Media Center Edition, and you said that NTFS is preferable to FAT32, I'm wondering if it might be possible to convert not only my C:\ but also an external HD to NTFS?
Otherwise, I'm pretty much clear about everything. Again, thanks for helping out and being really kind about it too. Am looking forward to the wisdom that you can extract from that screenshot