Ohkay. I have somewhere around an 80GB hardrive with to my knowledge 2 partitions. One is NTFS, which is where my Windows XP is, and this partition pretty much takes up all the hardrive space. The other partition is FAT, and its only taking up like 30mb, and it doesn't even have an assigned drive letter. instead of being displayed as something like "C", its just "-". Don't know what that is, Well onto the point. I have alot of virus's and junk and i just want to reformat my Windows XP. And also, I'm getting a Linux O/S soon, so i wanted an extra partition for it. I thought it would be easier to just delete all my partitions And just start from total scratch, and then insert my XP Installation cd, and create 2 partitions, and set everything up. 40GB for Win XP partition and 40GB for my future O/S. ..I'm a total newbie when it comes to partitioning and reformatting.. I've done it atleast 4 times in my life and i get lost everytime. How would i go about deleting my partition that Windows XP is on. I went into DOS and typed in 'Format C:', but then it said this drive is currently being used. (obviously..) So i guess i can't do it while i'm logged into Windows XP. Help? -Lice

Uhm... Sorry about double posting.. i don't really know the rules of these forums.. but.. I've heard of Fdisk and Gdisk.. Programs that help you manage deleting and creating partitions? I looked and google searched but just got een more confused trying to figure out more about these.. can anyone fill me in on how they would work also. thanks for any replies.. =] -Lice

put in your windows xp disk and restart your computer.. when you get into windows setup, it will ask if you want to install a clean copy. install a clean copy. you will come up to a screen that will ask which partition you want to use. you can also delete them. delete all the partitions (MAKE SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS) creat a new partition for windows xp...set aside only how much you need for xp, after you make that partition it will coutinue with setup once your in xp again, goto disk management and format the rest of the drive to whatever fs you want! hope this helps, respond if you need more help

How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;255867& ------------------- Simplified version of the above: How to Format: Use a 95 or 98 start up disk Boot to A: Fdisk Delete Partition or logical drive Delete primary DOS partition if fat16 or fat32 Delete Non DOS if NTFS Next Create DOS partition Create primary DOS partition Do you wish to use max size?_______Y Reboot to A: format C: You have FAT32 If you want NTFS you can convert later. How to Use Convert.exe to Convert a Partition to the NTFS File System

Ohkay i hope someone responds.. Im on my brothers computer.. What happened was the first thing i did was deleted the FAT partition that was only taking up like 30MB.. it was sort of weird cause you know i didn't create that partition, it was already there and i didn't know what it was. Well, i deleted it, and after that some configuration changed.. Ever since i deleted that partition, Now my screen resolution is stuck on 800 x 600, Which is rather big for me.. The only other option for screen size is 1024 x 768, and it won't even let me move the bar thing over so i can choose this option. (isn't there usually like 4 different screen size options? theres only 2.) Also, color quality is stuck on 16-bit. I tried to change it, but theres no other options in the list. This seems to be the only problems i've gotten since i deleted that one partition.. It seems that It was holding configuration files for my screen resolution.. or something? I knew i shouldn't of deleted it. I mean it was a partition only 20-30MB FAT, and it wasn't even assigned a drive letter. Should of left it alone. How do i fix this? :( Oh wait, i almost forgot.. Thats not the only problem. After deleting this partition, I tried to boot up my old Windows XP and it said something like: "Could not startup c: There is A problem with the hardware configuration. Please see the hardware configuration Documents." That wasn't exactly what is said.. but something simular. So, having this problem, i just deleted the partition this windows XP was on (at this point all partitions have been deleted) And started fresh with a new partition and copy of Windows XP. I finally finished setup and booted into XP, hoping everything would be fine. Well hey, atleast i was able to get into the O/S. it didn't give me an error of messed up hardware configuration files or anything. I actually got in, but the screen resolution was still the way it is explained above.. 16-bit, 800 x 600 and unchangable. I thought me deleting all partitions and starting over would fix this problem but i guess not. I'm starting to think i need that one FAT partition back, because apparently it had needed configuration files? Any help or responses would be greatly appreciated. -Lice