Topic: Help OS disaster!!!!

[Whiskas]

A friend  was given a new OS of XP, she already had XP installed but wanted to do a clean install of the new one. She has now ended up with two XP OS's one on C drive and one on E drive. She doesn't know how it downloaded to E drive. She now can't access the internet. Can partitions be removed and how? anyone got any ideas?

[Sandra]

Go to Start,Adminstrative Tools,Computer Management then Disk management Whiskas.
Once in there its possible to either delete or format which ever partition you want by right clicking on one and selecting what you want to do.
It sounds like she has asked it to install on a newly made partition without realising it as C will be her original OS drive and D her CD Rom.Its partioned C I think and created E and then installed it on there.
I would be temepted to format C and E  and reinstall XP again taking careful note of any options it asks about how she wants it partitioning and which drive she wants it installing on.   8)
Get back to me/someone if any more questions need answering.
Incidentally it is normal for XP to be installed from the CD Rom after setting BIOS to boot from the CD not from the hard drive or floppy at the A prompt in DOS as you do for 98 and ME  

[Whiskas]

Thanks Sandra my friend says that this has mostly solved the problem but she still has the C drive partitioned to 7.81

[Sandra]

Does she mean as a 7.81 gig drive ?

What drive has she and how many and what size of partitions does she want?

It may well be an 9 gig drive but after formating and partitioning even just as C drive it could well lose over 1 gig in doing that especially if she has set it up as FAT 32.

Nice new pic by the way Whiskas  

[Whiskas]

No Sandra, its a 40g hard drive, she partitioned it originally to C: being 7.81 etc. Now she's got a C drive 7.81 and 37 gig unallocated space.  There's no option apparently to undo that initial partition.

[Sandra]

Its ok Whiskas.
If she goes back into the disk manager as I said before she will be able to assign a drive letter and use the unallocated space.
I had a similar problem with mine after I flashed my bios which enabled it to see the full capacity of my 40 gig drive which previously only saw about 30 gig.
I then used the disk manager to format the unused part and merge it with the other partition.
Get back to me if you dont understand how I have explained this  

[Sandra]

I just reread your last post Whiskas.
She should be able to format C and then start afresh.
She will need to shut the pc down after formatting C,start it again and go into BIOS as its booting up.
Set the BIOS to boot from CD ROM then save and exit BIOS.
Restart with XP in the CD and it shoud give options to format and partition the drive.
Get her to set it at around 8 or 10 gig on the C drive which she wants to install XP on to and the remainder as D drive.
If it assigns the letters differently or doesnt format the remainder that can be done later and the drive letters changed around in disk manager.
Hope this clarifies it a bit  

[Sandra]

Actually Whiskas I think that after you install XP on to the partitioned and formatted primary partition you then have to allocate and format again the remaining part of the drive before you can use it.
This is where you will probably end up with it being called E drive again.
Using the disk manager change the drive letter of D to a higher letter say F or above(assuming she only has the hard drive as 2 partitions and a cd rom,if she has a writer too call it G or even H)
This will allow her to change the second partition of her hard drive from E to D and then the new F (or G or H ) CD Rom drive back to E.
That way she will end up with the normal arrangement of C and D for her 2 partitions of her hard drive with the OS on C and her CD Rom as E drive  

[Sandra]

I just had a play with my other pc and found that XP doesnt let you format the partition that has the OS on it.
The way she will have to do it is to use a 98 boot disk and then at the A prompt type FORMAT C:  then press ENTER then after the warning type Y and and press ENTER.
That will wipe it then reboot and set the BIOS to boot from CD Rom and install XP afresh  

Sorry that I misled you before but I am only just getting used to XP after installing it on mine 2 months back  8)

[Adept]

If you boot off the XP CD to get the Windows setup Sandra, you can change the partitions as much as you like. All you have to do is remove the partitions first by pressing "D" (I think)

[lobo]

@Whiskas

To remove or alter a partition without loosing data or Operating Systems use Partition Magic, but in my opinion you would be better off reformatting the drive and starting afresh, the reason you cannot see the second partition is that it hasn?t been formatted,,  Boot with a Win989se floppy disc type fdisk, create extended dos partition and select the un-partitioned space on the hard drive, you will the be asked to create a logical partition in that extended partition, reboot and format the new partition.

These operations can be carried out after booting from the XP CD as Adept correctly states.

The other option is to remove all partitions by running a program called Zap which will return the hard drive to its virgin state i.e. with no partitions or data on it at all and do a fresh install

( if you need ZAP I will e-mail it to you )

Brian
 

[Whiskas]

Thanks Lobo if you could email that to me it would be great

[lobo]

@Whiskas

On its way

Brian