my previous operating system, win98 was wiped out by a virus. I then installed win 2000 pro, changing the file system to NTFS.

I noticed that when i did this i lost about 2GB of space on my hard disk. When i bought my computer it had 17GB of hard disk space.

okay, so I didn't like win 2000 pro and dediced to change it to the new Win Me. It failed several times because it would not run on win 2000. I tried foolishly to convert the filing system to FAT from NTFS, but only ate up more hard disk space by reinstalling it, so now i had only 12GB of space left.

Doing as a friend suggested, I reformated my hard disk using FDISK, this left me with only 8GB of total space.

okay, so the problem is, how do i get back the missing space? Do i use a delete execution or program from the many floating around? But they only seem to work on the availible hard disk space, the stuff under "total disk space" not the ghost stuff that's not being detected.

so, anyone out there, help!!

thanks much.

Download the "Wipe Utility" from www.ibm.com

Make a boot disk w/ wipe on it then boot from the disk.
@ the A:\> type wipe 0
answer Y to the prompt then wait till its done.
The NT format utility is different than fdisk
If you create a NTFS partition fdisk will not see that partition at all!!! You need to remove the NTFS partition with the installer that you made it with!! Wipe will overwrite the whole disk and return it to an unformated disk.......it is the easyest thing to do with the mess that you are in!!!

to remove Win2000 from your hard drive if you have NTFS do the following. reboot your computer using the 4 setup disks you made for win2000 this will take you to win2000 setup chose to install when it gets to the part where it ask you which partition you want to install to choose your win2000 partition and choose to DELETE partition once deleted exit setup and reboot with win98 boot disk and run fdisk and delete all partitions and then create primary partition and make it active then create extended partitions once done reboot and run FORMAT C: /S and also format any other partitions you created. You should now have your full hard drive back minus an operating system.
If you want to confirm that you have it all back type A:fdisk /status and it should show all partition and total space on each partition. You are now ready to install your operating system put your win installation CD in the drive and type setup and it should install .