My boss asked me to format an XP machine in order to install a different OS, telling me I couldn't possibly break it - he obviously doesnt know me very well!! I created a 3rd partition to try and format the c: drive, I thought that went ok. I used fdisk to go in and look at what partitions were there, and there was the following - the first was a non dos partition, 31 MB, no system. Second, which I deleted (this is the problem), an NTFS partition. Third was the c: drive, a 2047 MB Fat16 partition. After I deleted the second, I thought its space would hop into one of the others, sorry, I'm new to this! But I go back in, it only lists the two other partitions, and says the total diskspace is 57216 MB. I don't need whats on that drive back, I just want to see the space and know I didn't mess up the whole PC!! Help me please!!

in fdisk tell it to delete all non dos partitions . i believe it is worded that way. its the last option

What will that do with the space it is taking up? Will it add it to one of the other partitions or leave it sitting unreachable somewhere?

What is it that you are trying to do exactly? What os are you putting on? Do you need any of the other partitions? If not, then your best route is to delete all partitions, and start again, creating either one big partion (either fat32 or NTFS if you are using a network version of windows, that is I'm assuming you're installing a version in windows) or more than one if you need that for some reason. If you are wanting to keep one of the existing partitions for any given reason, and wanting to add the additional free space to an existing drive, you will need a program like Partition Magic to do this, which is very easy to use. You cannot do this with fdisk. Once you delete a partition, the space that it occupied is just empty space, unless you create another partition using this space.

I don't need to keep anything on it, I'll be installing win 2000 server on it. One big partition seems like the way to go. How exactly do I do that? I'm in this job 2 weeks and I'm afraid to mess this up any more than I already have!!

then delete all partitions and make one new one ntfs if youll be installing win 2000

I decided to risk a biscuit and went ahead and deleted those partitions, and then created a new one. It worked perfectly! Thanks a million, folks!