Reinstalling OS in two different 'partitions'- help needed!!

[The Nightingale]

I'm planning on wiping my harrdrive and then reinstalling my two operating systems (XP and ME). A few years ago my PC was taken away my a local company so they could get rid of a few bit of spyware etc. Whilst doing that they also installed XP ( ME was the original). I now use both....

I'm slightly confused my the whole proccess of reinstalling. Firstly I want to know what exactly is a 'partition'? I've been told before that I need to reinstall the two operating systems in a partition. I don't know how to do this, could anyone give a brief guide?

Also do I need to do anything different in the reinstallation proccess because I'm installing two operating systems, or do you just install them normally?

Help appreciated!

Jessica

 

[~K-Pow~]

A partition is when you seperate your drive into two drives. There are some good programs for that, i think partition magic is the most popular.

Then i believe you can install a different OS on each one and then it should on boot up allow you to pick which OS you want to boot from.

 

[dude_se]

if i were you id wipe each partition clean (you should already have 1 for xp and 1 for me). id then re install xp on 1. id then make sure thats all working fine. id then install me on the other. just install them both normally but on the different partitions. you can use partition magic to format the hdd or you can use a boot disk, etc.. when installing xp you can actually format the partition during the setup if you find that easier but not sure about me.

 

[The Nightingale]

if i were you id wipe each partition clean (you should already have 1 for xp and 1 for me). id then re install xp on 1. id then make sure thats all working fine. id then install me on the other. just install them both normally but on the different partitions. you can use partition magic to format the hdd or you can use a boot disk, etc.. when installing xp you can actually format the partition during the setup if you find that easier but not sure about me.

Thanks to both of you for your help.

I'm planning on using a program called Darik's boot and nuke to wipe the drive. When I run this program will it just automatically search and distroy the different partitions so I can then reinstall easily?

Also, when you say you seperate your drive, would you install ME in C for instance and then XP in D ? When you are going through the reinstallation proccess for XP and ME.

Sorry if that questions seems silly, as I said- I'm a novice....

Thanks for the help- I'll check out partition magic!!

 

[PerfectSK]

Yeah, like ~K-Pow~ said, when you partition the hard drive its like your splitting into different parts. Basically instead of seeing one 160gb hds, your computer would see two 80gb hds, if you partitioned directly in half. You would give Windows ME 80gigs and XP 80 gigs. Partition Magic is supposed to be great. Let us know how everything goes!