hi, i bought this HP pavilion 760n computer about a year ago, and it didnt come with a restoration cd. therefore i borrowed an xp pro cd from a friend and went to freshly install xp pro from home edition. i didnt boot from the bios, i just selected clean install and it installed xp. however, i found out that im missing like 40 gbs out of 120. how can i get my space back??? i tried to reformat again, but i only created another partition. now, it gives me a list of operating systems to choose from during startup (either xp pro, or xp pro : lol) . how can i get rid of this message and get my hd space back?? thanks in advance!

If originally had only a restore CD, then you have a hidden partition, which is normal. You need to reformat and remove hidden partitions etc. Partition Magic 8 may do these. As to 2 XP's you have installed twice, easy mistake to make. Best bet is to start afresh ensuring your 120GB drive is recognised as around 112GB prior to install!

boot up to a win 98/ME boot disk.... fdisk.... delete all logical,non-dos,primary partitions...delete em all and create 1 using all the space on the hard drive and set it active http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;255867