I'm running Windows 2000 on a P4, 512RAM, with a 60 gig hard drive. When the PC was built, it was partitioned with 4 gig on the C: drive and 56 on the D:.(NTFS) I have no idea why... Windows is installed on the C: drive. With all the subsequent software installed, my C: partition is almost full and the performance is sluggish. The swap file is on the D:. Rebuilding the PC is a last resort as it is heavily customized with reg settings, installations etc. (I'm a software developer). I have 2 questions. 1.) Are there any freeware utilities that will enable me to make the C: partition bigger? do I have to fork out for partition magic..?....or, I guess what my real question is, is..... 2.) How else can I improve the performance? Any ideas appreciated. Thanks,

It used to be recommended to have the OS partition accessable by boot diskette for repair. Rest of the drive would have to be ntfs since W2K only supports creating a 32gig fat32 partition [this is a limit of W2K not of fat32] Easiest thing would have been to install your software to d: not c:. There are no freeware programs I am aware of that can resize your c:. Perhaps someone else knows. If you do resize using PM make sure to first move your pagefile back to c: and then remove d: completely so the remaining drive space is raw. I have run into issues with resizing c: while data of any type was on d:. Never had a problem when I removed d: and resized c: to use the rest of the drive. In your case how you are partitioned has NOTHING to do with your systems performance. Only suggestions would be a faster cpu and/or drive. Might want to monitor your pagefile usage to see if you need more ram. Best of luck!

1. Two of the most useful apps I have ever used are Partition Magic and Drive Image from Powerquest. In your situation, (depending upon how much free space is on your d drive) you could make an image of your c drive and store it on d, or (best)just burn it directly to cd-r (assuming you have a burner. Use high compression to 1/2 the size of the image) With your c drive safely backed up to cd, use Partition Magic to resize your c partition to a more realistic size, say 10 GB, maybe 15 GB. I prefer to make these changes using the floppies that PM and DI give you the option of creating. You could borrow these floppies from a buddy who has them and not have to actually install either app. 2. WAys to improve performance are many. Check out BlackVipers site for a list of services which can be disabled or set to manual. Ensure your machine is updated with all M$ updates, that you don't have any viruses, trojans or other malware sapping your system performance. AVG has a free version of its anti virus available. Spybot and AdAware are both worthwhile downloads and will detect most malware. You can use MSconfig from Windows 98 or XP to check out what programs are running on your system and selectively shut down what you don't need. You can also do this at the Run key in the registry but be damn sure to back it up first before deleting registry keys. Clean out temp files, temp internet files and then defrag your drive. Turn off the eye candy and screen saver. Turn off auto updates, task manager, BITS, etc. Be prepared to do your maintenance manually though. Conventional wisdom dictates that the swapfile should be on c unless you can move it to a different physical drive - debateable It is always good practice to keep your data on a separate partition away from your OS. Fred Langa at www.langa.com has some really good advice on setting up any system and backing it up so it can always be restored in a matter of minutes.

Hi Brini. Have a look at the link below, it might help you. http://computing.net/cgi-bin/mycomputingread.pl?5 Have a nice day.