Man i need help

[PurleeDef]

its a dell comp, so factory. I did burn a recovery disc for vista but i havent tried it yet...im a little bit skeptical cuz you cant always trust the stuff you download online

also whenever the comp starts up it says diskette drive 0 seek failure

press f1 to continue f2 to enter setup


although if i press f1 it seems to run as it should so im not too worried about it

 

[duxtape]

I think you may need to install service pack 2 for XP

 

[PurleeDef]

start pc run any operating system you have on and right click my computer click manage, then wait for it to load and click disk management, now do you see unpartioned?

i did this and its showing me 2 volumes

H: which is 127.99 GB

then XP2_Per_Eng (G which is 526 MB


thats all im seeing

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Windows XP does not recognize drives larger than 127GB, which is why you only saw that much of your 500GB drive. Only after installing SP2, will you be able to use the rest of the drive.

After doing as Antedemo suggested, you can then format and partition any unallocated disk space.

To skip this part altogether, you could create a slipstreamed CD containing both XP and SP2. The easiest way to do it is to use a program called AutoStreamer. Easy to follow instructions and a download link are here: http://www.simplyguides.net/guides/using_autostreamer/using_autostreamer.shtml

 

[PurleeDef]

first off thanks to everyone in the thread

looks like im almost set, if someone could just tell me how to get the unallocated space onto the H drive i'd be good right?

 

[Teny]

i never knew how to create it except through Windows XP setup, i just create the partition, then get out, then use partition magic to form them together.

 

[PurleeDef]

all i can find is the demo for partition magic and it doesnt seem to work at all unless i buy it

i thought itd be like a trial

 

[wol-va-rine]

first off thanks to everyone in the thread

looks like im almost set, if someone could just tell me how to get the unallocated space onto the H drive i'd be good right?

dude, if you don't care about the information on the drive and just want to wipe it clean and start over I would just reinstall XP on it, put the XP disc in and let it load the drivers, then when you get to the options, delete all the partitions that are there, then create new partitions, if I was you, I'd create one that was about 80GB for your boot drive, then create another one with the space that's left over for your storage drive...

then install XP on the smaller partition, do a quick format and install it on the 80GB drive, then you should be good to go with a clean install of XP...

 

[PurleeDef]

dude, if you don't care about the information on the drive and just want to wipe it clean and start over I would just reinstall XP on it, put the XP disc in and let it load the drivers, then when you get to the options, delete all the partitions that are there, then create new partitions, if I was you, I'd create one that was about 80GB for your boot drive, then create another one with the space that's left over for your storage drive...

then install XP on the smaller partition, do a quick format and install it on the 80GB drive, then you should be good to go with a clean install of XP...

if i reinstalled XP wouldnt i lose SP2? which would once again cut out the 300something gigabytes on my hard drive?


really it doesnt matter though does it? nothing wrong with having 2 different drives as long as the 300 gb is allocated to its own drive. Now I have an H: and an I: and together theyre 500gb

 

[A True Folder]

You'll need a third party software to merge partitions as XP does not have this function like Vista does, or do as AR posted earlier, create a slipstreamed disk with XP SP2/3 on it and reinstall Windows

Also if this is a clean install why are your drives G & H ???

Before you go any further and install programmes change your drive letters, right click partition and select "change drive letter/path"
To save problems later make your OS drive C: and the other partition D: (or whatever you want) the CD rom should auto change to E: next boot, if it doesn't you can change it manually if you want to .



it won't hurt to have two partitions, in fact a lot of people prefer it.