Help on merging partitions please!

[crossed_wires]

Hello. I'm in need of some help. A seemingly simple task has had me grinding on google searches and booting off floppys and CDs for well over an hour now.
I'm trying to merge two existing partitions on a hard drive. The end result I'm looking for is the 120GB drive to be a single partition and formatted(clean). Right now, its split into a 10GB and a 110GB partition.
In the past, I've used Windows install CDs and hard drive bootable floppys(Maxtor Maxblast,etc). I have old DOS commands on a directory on my other hard drive, but Windows can't seem to access them b/c of conflicting versions of DOS. I managed to make a Windows XP boot disk(floppy), but when I boot off of it, I can't access any of my hard drives, nor does it recognize FDISK. Note also that I don't have a Windows XP CD -- only a stupid Gateway system restore disk. Is there a way a can merge the two partitons with either a utility within WindowsXP, or by a free download? I don't want to pay $30+ for partition magic and those other programs as I believe there is another way. Can I either:
(a) Somehow merge the partitons before/during the format within WindowsXP
(b) Make a bootable floppy that will recognize my hard drives and DOS commands?

Please note that the drive I am intending to partition & format is a Primary slave drive and is detected and working fine within WinXP.
Help please! Thanks a bunch.
-Ryan

 

[Law]

Try GParted, but I'm not sure if it can merge two formated NTFS partition. It might be able to resize 1 NTFS partition if the other partition is unallocated or unformatted.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php

DOS or even the DOS version that supports NTFS won't be able to have the feature to merge two partition, to be honest with you I never tried any other software beside Norton PartitionMagic which is the only software I know that can merge and do almost everything.

 

[crossed_wires]

Thanks for your help
I ended up using BootIt and it worked great. It's a free 30 day trial and $30 afterwards if you wish to purchase. It's a great piece of software, so I may just pay it.

 

[EricB]

Thanks for your help
I ended up using BootIt and it worked great. It's a free 30 day trial and $30 afterwards if you wish to purchase. It's a great piece of software, so I may just pay it.

for that price get partition magic

 

[benzimm86]

if it is a second drive couldnt you use the windows disk managment snap-in in the mmc

 

[crossed_wires]

nah, it was for a drive that I just sold. I just needed something to crunch it back to a single partition, so I could reformat it before shipping it off. It worked and is out of my hands now.
My comp has a single HDD.