FAT32 to FAT

[patio]

Older Dell running WinME

I have a machine i'm tuning up for a friend. Ran all diagnostics; AV; Spyware utilities etc.
Did defrag and scandisk as well.
When finished it was still sluggish so i re-seated both RAM sticks as well just in case. Still slow.
Then i noticed that the drive had been somehow switched to FAT instead of FAT 32.
Just curious , is there malware that could have done this on it's own ? ?
She says she hadn't changed anything.
Also how to convert it back for her without losing data.
TIA,

patio.

 

[Nodsu]

The FAT acronym is used for both FAT16 and FAT32. Most likely the filesystem is still FAT32 and just the program the reported it didn't bother with the full name. Those things that do differentiate between FAT32 and FAT16 use exactly those terms, not plain FAT.