how silly of me
i forgot to mention my point!

ok so everytime i try and run protools now it says there is a DAE error which i found out represents there is not enough RAM.

hmm...that sucks!! did you make sure DMA is on for your hard drives and off for your CDROM drives? Change the DAE size to see if that helps? did you change the hardware configuration when you formatted and reinstalled the OS? Any other DAE error messages you are getting? 128 should be fine but indeed should be higher..typically you want 256 or more! What other software is running in the background? If you have Norton's or any Virus protect software running..kill it..dont hook up to the internet when you dont need to be. Networking only slows down an audio machine!
Let me know the answers to some of these questions
Opus

thanx opus i fink it musta been norton because i never used to have it and now i do have auto norton going all the time in the background.
one more question:
is there a way of changing the RAM for DAE in protools?

When you change the DAE engine size...you know...you have 0-4 I believe it is...that's kind of teh same thing..the mower juice ya got the more you can enable it or something like that...it's late and I've been in computer nightmares myself...
look at my VIA nightmares post!!!
Opus