Slade,

I'd have to say that reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling (or installing a new) OS is not "nothing changed." That brings something else to mind that you can try. Make sure you have the control panel version that can connect to the secondary server. You can get it from here:
http://www.gpsoftware.com/kb/q01-1050.htm

I recently put G2 on a new PC and had to download the control panel manually to connect to the secondary server. Once I did that, it worked fine. The control panel on the G2 distribution disk will not go to the secondary server. My G2 almost always goes to the secondary server, so this may well be your problem.

If that does not work, here are a few more questions:
What did you do after reformatting the computer? Did you install the same OS or a new one? Which one? What about firewall software? How are you connecting to the internet? Do you have a router with a HW firewall?

If you can not see the server, there is something you can fix on your end to see it ... just have to figure out what changed when you reformatted. FWIW, the port you need open in your firewall is 21 for FTP. You also need any SW firewall configured to allow the G2 control panel to access the Internet. The ports for multiplayer are different from the ports for upgrading.

FWIW, I just tried to connect now. The primary server did not work, and the secondary server connected fine.

Good luck ...