First always back up your data. Make sure you have the restore disks that came with your computer, it will have all of the drivers for the computer.Normally, you can just boot up with the Disks in the drive, it will ask you if you want to start from the CD or the hard.
But realistically, if you are having problems and your system and you are running ME, reformating won't necessarily fix things. ME just has a lot of bugs in it. I've "blow away" some many copies of ME of friends who thought there was something wrong with their computers. Its not the computer its ME. If you can, purchase a copy of 2000, or XP. That's really the best option.
Reformat the drive
yes
reformat
Thankfully there are non that we know of in Windows.
No, a reformat does not take place if you're only upgrading service packs. If you have any doubts, be sure to get the service pack upgrade through Windows Update.
Boot from the Windows XP CD and let it reformat the drive. WIndows XP cannot use the native Ubuntu filesystem, so you'll need to reformat the drive anyway and you might as well do it using the XP install disc.
There is no upgrade path from Windows ME to Windows 2000. You would have to reformat the hard drive to remove ME before you install Windows 2000 from scratch.
You can't reformat a Windows Movie Maker project file (.MSWMM). Conversion to Standard formats takes place during the mix-down (export) process of 'Publishing/Finishing/Saving' the movie.
You might not need to reformat. You could try just uninstalling the Novell Client, by going to the properties of the Network adapter. If you do want / need to reformat, you should do it with the original disk that came with the computer. Sometimes the EULA key will not work with other manufacturer's CD.
You can't reformat media (of any type) in Windows Movie Maker. There is no optimizing feature for doing that.
You cannot reformat a hard drive and keep operating system(s) untouched. The point of formatting is to erase all data. There is only one exception, you can reformat some partitions on your hard drive if you have any. If you want to keep your current operating system those partitions must not be system.
One can learn how to reformat a hard drive by visiting the step by step instructions on either the Windows or Apple computer site (depending on the hard drive maker).