Stupid proprietary Compaq junk (and something about missing partitions)

[Toshiro]

This Compaq Presario 5020 I have... it's got one hard drive that is about 7 or 8 GB. Windows 98 only gets to see about half that. The other half is taken up by something. I can see that in FDISK. It's supposdedly a Secondary DOS partition with... well I can't remember what they are, but they're in there and I can't see them (I go to check in the partition but there's nothing there), and I can't delete the partition because those things are in there.

I was under the impression it was the Compaq BIOS backup being stored there, explaining why it wouldn't let me access it... but no reason it should take up almost 4GB!!

When installing Win98 (which I had to do several times because I had the wrong serial number and it would install a flaky copy which didn't support networking), the setup app tells me there's an NT partition (NTFS, which makes sense becaus the HDD previously had Windows XP (Home, I believe, might have been Pro) but that install was crumbling like the Roman Empire.....) and that I will not be able to access it with Windows 98. When running XP, the HDD had 3 partitions, C D and E (CD drive was F) but now there's only C. The previous partitions added up to aslmot 7 GB, so I think if I could somehow remove that partition (or shrink it and give the free space to C) that I could get back some of that harddrive.

I do NOT have access to a Windows XP disk.
I DO have working Windows 98 disk.
I DO have several boot-floppies with FDISK and all that (which doesn't help).
I DO NOT have any other hard drives that will work (besides my eMachines' primary drive which I WILL NOT RISK trying), and I don't know if this motherboard will let me use any other HDDs.

Would Partition Magic help?
What else can I try? (I have access to Kazaa Lite if there is NO other option).

NOTE: this is currently my only working computer (until the eMachines below is fixed) so I don't want to do anything TOO risky.

 

[Inaris]

Yes, the extra partition is the compaq recovery disc. It's pretty stupid but it allows them to restore from hdd instead of a cd. I would suggest that you take the chance and scrath this system. You have Knoppix, so use it. Delete all partitions and leave the drive unpartioned. Boot up with the 98 cd and format the entire drive with FAT32. That will give you back what you want. You could use Knoppix to only remove the NTFS and the protected area that Compaq secured, but that is up to you. Then you will need to create a new partition with Fdisk and then you can format it for FAT so 98 can use it.
IF you don't want to use Knoppix, there is a tool out there called BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) that will help you go this without using Linux. It works really well and is very friendly.

Good Luck