Big Problem....help req'd

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towouk

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I bought a pc and thought i could configure it myself. I installed winxp pro onto the c drive but didn't realise the hard drive needed partioning. When i saw the size of the drive at 1.99 i freaked! A friend told me i needed to format the rest of the hard drive......which i did. I thought i'd be ok with all the programmes going to the bigger e drive. My problem is that of course all documents, temp files, internet temp files go to the c drive and i'm now essentially 'full up'.

My question........

How can i transfer the operating system to the larger portion of the hard drive or can i reinstall winxp pro to the bigger portion.

One final thing, the 1.99 gb portion is FAT32 and the 78gb portion is ntfs.

I know i should have left it to someone who new what he/she was doing........but i'm here and gutted to say the least. ANY help at all will be greatly welcome!!

Tony.
 
Well, you need to blow away both partitions and repartition to one 80gb one and install Windows on there. Boot from the XP cd, and follow the instructions to install a new version of Windows. It wil come to a screen where you can delete partitions. Follow the instructions to delete both. Then proceed to set up a partition in the drive, and the format it using NTFS and install Windows. Alot easier than it sounds.

Or you could get your hands on Partition Magic which should merge both partitions. You will first have to convert your FAT partition to NTFS, which partition magic may or may not be able to do for you, I dont know.
 
Thanks Him, you've certainly helped allay my fears somewhat......as i've not installed that much since performing the horrible act, i've not got too much to lose.

I'll let you know how i get on!
 
Well, if you use Partition Magic you (shouldnt) lose any data. It dosent always work like it should though. You're welcome, let me know how things turn out!

-Bones
 
Partition magic kicks ass! I have one more thing to say though, why such a small partition?

And cant you type something into the 'run' command to change from fat32 to nfts?

oh and when you format windows will ask what youd like to sue... ntfs or not.
 
It was prolly an error or a mix up that caused the partition to cap at 2gb. I know that Windows 9/x has severe limits on partition sizes. I believe it is 32GB for FAT, but I am not sure.
 
Well...........partition magic couldn't help as it wouldn't convert the FAT 32 to NTFS.

I ended up installing windows again to the larger partition (forgot to boot from the windows disc though) and i now have the same version of WIN XP on both partitions. At start up i'm asked which version i want to run and it defaults to the newer version. Tried both.................and all seems fine.

All's well that ends well i guess. I'm still perplexed though , as i didn't think it was possible to have two of the same operating system on the same pc?
 
You could install 50 versions of the same os as long as they are in different folders. I think you will end up with other issues if you leave it like that. You really should get that all set up correctly as posted previously if you want to avoid future headaches.
 
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