I wanted to reformat my computer and reinstall XP, but somehow installed it on my other partition!!! Now I have it on primary drive C and logical drive D. Please help me get rid of one of them (preferably C) so I can free up some space and fix things. It wouldn't let me format C or use FDISK from msdos. I can't figure out how to use disk management to do this from some posts I've seen. Thanks.

go back to disk managent. open and right click the partition you want gone. delete it

Melanie: If you are re-installing Win XP, Fdisk will not see an NTFS formatted partition. You will have to use your XP disk to do all of your partition manipulations. Why would you want to delete partition C? If you're going to get rid of one, it should be D not C. Put your Windows XP CD in your drive and go through the re-partitioning or formatting there.

c: = active Primary = XP (and you don't want this version); d: = Extended (logical-drive) = XP and you want this version? Both versions share/use the XP boot/start-up files in c: ; consequently Disk Admin (in either version of XP) will almost certainly refuse to reformat that partition - you're asking XP to wreck/lose part of its basic installation, and it won't. If c: = ntfs then you will not be able to use '98 Fdisk to delete the c: partition (and then use Fdisk/format to reconfig/reformat) either; Extended partitions have to go first then Primary partition(S). Also Fdisk will not work with (deleting) ntfs Extended partition areas; only can delete Primary ntfs... Possibly the simplest approach? Boot to version you want to retain (on d: ); set default OS to boot to be that version. Via XP Explorer, locate and delete the c: XP version (probably in as c:\winnt); also its pagefile.sys, if each XP installation is using its own (i.e you are not using the c: Pagefile.sys version for both XP installations). Reboot to verfiy you can still boot d: version. Presuming so (and should be able to) edit the boot.ini to remove references to XP in c: (c:\winnt version). Reboot to verify all is still OK. Presuming so, empty recycle-bin; defrag drive to tidy up the scene. (You can dispense with editing the boot.ini entries if you wish; it isn't critical - just tidies up the file.) This approach gets around the need to reformat c: ; also the need to run XP recovery routine to restore missing XP boot-files (if you were to lose/reformat c: then those XP boot-files would be lost...). Any other unwanted files/folders on c: can likewise be deleted; after-which defrag the drive. If c: = fat32 then a (re)format (of c: ) via '98 boot-disk util is a viable way to go... But again you will have to run XP recovery to restore deleted XP boot-files to c: . The routine detailed above may be safer/easier? Traditionally c: = OS/apps/utils etc., and Extended area(s) = data (and maybe a second or more OS); but data can just as easily be on the Primary and OS etc on Extended - however boot/start-up files will/must be on the active Primary (c: ). If you want to have a working XP on c: intead of d: post back? It really doesn't matter where it is; you have a separate data partition and this is a good away go. I'd stick with what you have for now (XP on d: , data + boot-files on c: ).