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How do I delete a partition

eirebhoy

I installed XP and it is on drive F but I still have ME on drive C. Is it possible to delete C and rename F to C?

BTW XP is great!:)

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ColmOT [MSFT]

No, you cannot rename the F: drive to C:.

The problem is that the XP installation has hard coded references to f: that it obtained during setup.

LegacyUser

xp boot loader is on c: if you delete c: xp wont boot

vibe666

sounds like you need partiton magic mate.

if you have partition magic (7 or 8 afaik) you can add remove and delete partitions as you like as long as you don't touch the boot partition. PM will then reassign anything that referenced the old drive letter to the new one with a little program called drive mapper which is part of partition magic.

you can also move data around from partition to partition, so even if your OS is on a different drive you can move it to another one and still use it, with PM taking care of all the stuff going on underneath.

www.powerquest.com

ColmOT [MSFT]

I've had bad experiences with PM...so if you're going to use it make sure and back up everything that's important before you go near PM.

Additionally, if you use PM and have prblems with Windows in the future, it'll be very difficult to diagnose if it's actually a Windows issue, or as a result of using PM to swap partitions.

Tivoli

glad you got it up and running eirebhoy

as for the partiton problem, leave it alone, my aunts pc is set up like that and is working for nearly 2 years, never hangs programs install to the f drive by default ect

Sleipnir

I think partition magic can be more trouble than it's worth in the long run.

The best setup is a clean one. How many hard drives do you have? What's your current/preferred partition setup on each one?

This is what I would do (involves starting from scratch but if you want a decent disk setup, that's the best way to go)
Get a 98 SE or WinXP boot disk from here
Get a blank floppy run the downloaded prog. This will create a bootable disk which will have CD-ROM support (which you'll need to install XP from CD obviously)

Make sure you have all files on whichever partition/disk backed up.

Reboot with floppy disk in.
Make a note of CD-ROM drive letters.
insert your XP cd and type whatever drive letter it's in e,g
e:\ <return>
then at the e:\ prompt type
dir <return>
if it shows the files, great, CD is viewable.

Next go back to a:\ prompt and type
fdisk<return>
Yes to large disk support
from here you can create and delete partitions. You can also switch between disks.
My advice would be to delete ALL partitions on whatever disk you want to install XP on, or you can split it if you like.
If done properly, when you press the option for "display partition information"
it should say
"no partitions defined"
Then go to "create primary disk partition"
Use the full disk.
once it's done you'll need to reboot with bootdisk.
Then at a:/ prompt type
format c:\
This will create a blank disk (FAT32 format)
rebot again and change to the CD-ROM which contains XP.
At the prompt type
cd\i386 <return>
winnt <return>

This starts XP installation.

You can copy the i386 folder to the C drive to make it faster but that's for another thread!

Hope that helps. It may sound long-winded but IMHO, it's the best way to start with a good XP (or any MS) operation system.
If done in a logical, step-by-step manner then it's easy-peasy.

vibe666

i've never had a problem with the newer versions of Partition magic and i've used it a lot for lots of different things. everything from fat to ntfs and linux partitions, moving, copying, resizing, creating, deleting, converting and reformatting etc. and all have always been fine (touch wood) even when changing frive letters and moving the OS around to different patitions. even cloning an ntfs xp patition onto another drive it let me boot from both. clever stuff, and it's come a long way since the earlier versions. as long as you have a decent amount of rfree disk space you should be fine.

oh, and you don't need a boot floppy to install xp. you can boot directly from the xp cd.

in fact you can boot directly from the cd from win98se upwards. (oh, and nt4 too).

Sleipnir

Originally posted by vibe666
oh, and you don't need a boot floppy to install xp. you can boot directly from the xp cd.

in fact you can boot directly from the cd from win98se upwards. (oh, and nt4 too).

But you need it to run fdisk in order to delete/create partitions, which was why I suggested it.

vibe666

i haven't used fdisk for years, there's no point to it. you can delete and create partitions from within the xp setup program itself, so why bother?

edit: removed something which didn't sound nice.

Sleipnir

Great! Yippee! I'm delighted for you.
<pops champagne>

I prefer to use Fdisk, it's easier to see the partition setup.
I ain't here to debate the use of one way or another, the original poster can use Partmagic or any other way he chooses, if he goes down your suggested route, my confidence will probably recover inside of a month.

You use one way, I use another. Go figure.

(PS, please don't call me daft, it's just my preferred way of doing it and I've been doing this sort of thing for nigh on 15 years)

vibe666

that's why i edited the post, thought it was a bit harsh. as for the 15 years thing, maybe it's time to move on. i've been doing it for about the same amount of time (professionally for 10 years) and i'm always the first to try new things. they don't always work, but i'll always give them the chance.

if you like being able to see exactly whats what with your partitions from within DOS i'd strongly suggest something like ranish, which would make the whole process much faster and easier for you without resorting to partition magic.

www.ubd.com or www.ultimatebootcd.com are perfect for the job, and both have ranish on them if you really want acces to all the tools you could wish for.

sorry for calling you daft, but i honestly don't understand why you would put yourself through all the hassle of using fdisk when there are so many faster more userfriendly and versatile things out there you could use.

as for the partition magic thing i'm betting it's been quite a while since you've seriously tried it. version 7 & 8 are nothing like the earlier versions, having been almost completely re-written from the ground up. i use 8 now, and have lost count of the amount of times i've used it to do all manner of disk related tasks and it's never let me down once. not only that, but it can do things no other partitioning app can do. off the top of my head, resizing an ntfs boot partition from within windows itself without rebooting, which surprised me as i was expecting it to reboot to do it.

i'm really not trying to have a go at you, and sorry if it seems that way, but you could be doing so much more using better tools. can't you at least give them a try? i'm guessing if you're in the industry you can at least try some tools on a non essential system or two, just to give them a go.

about the only thing i even use a floppy drive for now, is for ghosting machines, they just don't have much of a use any more. i still think they'll be putting them into new machines for years to come but it's mostly just out of habit now i think

eirebhoy

Thanks for the help lads. Unfrotunately I am back on ME for the moment because I used Fdisk to delete C without looking at any of your replies.:rolleyes:

mukki - I would keep both partitions on my drive but my computer keeps crashing (I am typing this in wordpad so when the comp crashes it will be saved) for some strange reason and scandisk won't run with both partitions on the drive for some reason. I also just want to have one partition on the drive.

vibe666 the easiest way to install XP is to boot directly from the CD but even when I have CD-Rom as my primary boot it fails to load, therefore the only way to install is from windows. Also, Kananga, I think I tried to install it the way you explained without joy and I will try it again if there is no other solution because I don't want to reinstall ME again. As I said in another thread (which most of you would have probably read) when I run through the setup of XP it asks me this:

The following list shows the existing partitions and unpartitioned space on this computer.
Use the UP and DOWN ARROW KEYS to select an item in the list.

- To set up Windows Xp on the selected item, press ENTER.

- To create a partitiion in the unpartitioned space, press C.

- To delete the selected partition, press D.

I then tried to delete the only partition and I got this message:

Setup is unable to perform the requested operation on the selected partition. This partition contains temporary setup files that are required to complete the installation.

I am googling as I type and I found this thread with a few people in the same position. They were told this:
If your PC can’t boot from the CD drive, you will have to make the 6 floppies.
How can I create Windows XP bootdisks?
I'll give that a go and see what happens.

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by ColmOT [MSFT]
I've had bad experiences with PM...so if you're going to use it make sure and back up everything that's important before you go near PM.

Additionally, if you use PM and have prblems with Windows in the future, it'll be very difficult to diagnose if it's actually a Windows issue, or as a result of using PM to swap partitions.

Ain't that the truth

You are better off with two partitions - system and data
every so often you backup your system partition to the data partition - if you have a dual boot (eg: one OS in two folders) you can use the back door to restore your live OS - or use ghost / partimage / lcopy to copy the OS folder to a folder on the 2nd drive - at the worst you could then format the system drive and start again..

Sleipnir

Originally posted by vibe666
sorry for calling you daft,

Don't worry about it. I'll have a look at those apps you mentioned and you're right, I haven't looked at partition magic for a couple of years now co it annoyed it! But, I'm always willing to look at newer/easier ways of doing things and ranish looks interesting. thanks for the tip.

But, from EireBhoys posts just up a bit, creating/deleting partitions etc through the XP setup has a few problems. If you don't have a FAT formatted partition somewhere on your hard drive for the setup files, then you can't even get to that stage as XP has to copy setup files to the HD first! Good auld MS forethought.

So, you need to create a partition first using something else. And then you might as well set the whole thing up from there anyway!

I will certainly have a look at the tools you mentioned and see how much better they are (fdisk is pretty basic I admit that!)
But I can have a disk blanked and ready for a new format in about 1 minute

vibe666

fairy nuff.

ranish is great, and the ultimate boot cd has so many toys on it you'll be playing with them for weeks. 50mb+ download, but well worth it. the ubd is meant for making boot floppies so it's a lot smaller download, but there are still plenty of handy apps on it to be going on with.

if only i could get ghost to netowkr boot machines i could almost do without floppy drives at all. although it still wants exclusive access to the disk for making images so thats out the window too for now.

just as a side note i remember a post (possibly on another website) about what people would e using in 20 years, and people were talking about all this bleeding edge tech that was in the rumourmill at the time, and someone else tacked 3 1/2" floppy to the end of the spec for a laugh, but i get the funny feelign they'll still be putting them in machines for a while yet. although i'm finding my usb flash disk very useful in taking it's place so far, except for my home system not wanting to boot off it which sucks.

sorry /OT Ramble

moridin

Originally posted by vibe666
sorry for calling you daft, but i honestly don't understand why you would put yourself through all the hassle of using fdisk when there are so many faster more userfriendly and versatile things out there you could use.

I dunno, as for me I HATE DOS fdisk, and partition magic sucks donkeys. I use linux fdisk, because at least then I know that it's doing exactly what I want it to and if I need to manually change something I can change it using a powerful interface

Originally posted by vibe666
as for the partition magic thing i'm betting it's been quite a while since you've seriously tried it. version 7 & 8 are nothing like the earlier versions, having been almost completely re-written from the ground up. i use 8 now, and have lost count of the amount of times i've used it to do all manner of disk related tasks and it's never let me down once. not only that, but it can do things no other partitioning app can do. off the top of my head, resizing an ntfs boot partition from within windows itself without rebooting, which surprised me as i was expecting it to reboot to do it.

For all the times that it works, it can also bugger up just as much. I tried using version 8 to resize my boot partition recently and it really really didn't like doing it and I ended up formatting the thing and using fdisk to resize it.

eirebhoy

I installed XP with the 6 boot disks from the link above and it is has the drive all to itself.:) One or two things I noticed since I last had installed with FAT16, when I try to run scandisk I get this message:

The disk check could not be performed because the disk check utility needs exclusive access to some Windows files on the disk. These files can be accessed only be restarting Windows.

also, when the computer shuts down wrong it doesn't do a scan disk like it used to do. Why is this?

Another little thing is when I dial to connect to the internet I get two tones instead of one (one tone is delayed by a second), can this be sorted?

Also, when I connected to the net on ME I never got above 48kbps but on XP I am getting over 50kbps, Internet Explorer feels slower on XP, what could be the reason for that?

Cheers.

vibe666

big can....

....open....

....worms.....

....everywhere!!!!!!!

dunno about a lot of that, but if you restart the PC and press 'F8' before the windows boot screen you can boot in safe mode which should allow you to run scandisk, defrag and whatever else you like without interruptions.

what file system are you using now for the boot drive? if it's FAT32 then you should still be getting the scandisk thing, but you'll rarely (if ever) see it if you are using NTFS because the way it works you are not likely to get any errors on the disk the way you do with FAT. remember it was originally designed with servers and other high end systems in mind so had to be more robust. AFAIK.

All I know is that if i was downloading stuff with kazaa in the past when i was using fat32 on win98 almost always if the system crashed mid-download the file would be lost, but with NTFS on XP its almost always OK.

not sure about the 2 tones, but as for the speed increase, it's quite possible that the driver for XP is better than your old one, or XP is just managing to use whats there better. a likely cause for IE being slower is that XP is eating more resources than ME did so there is less left for doing other things.

how much RAM do you have?