Big problem with small hard drive.

[Guest]

My girlfriend's laptop crashed a couple weeks ago so she used her XP disc to
get it going again but since then she has two hard disk drives listed on "My
Computer" where previously she had only one.

Here's the situation:
Disc drive C FAT 32
Used space: 5.10 GB
Free space: 3.1 GB

Disc Drive E NTFS
Used space: 1.89 GB
Free space: 17.6 MB

It seems that the computer only uses the newly created Drive E now and as a
result she keeps getting "low disk space on local disk (E" messages and she
is unable to save much of anything.

What's caused this (she thinks her iPod was connected to the laptop when she
used the XP disc) and is there a way to return to the previous situation of
only one local disc (C or get the computer to use local disc C: instead of
local disc E:?

System:
Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M
2600+
1.52GHz
192 MB of RAM
Service pack 1

Any help on this would be much appreciated.

 

[rob]

"She used her win xp cd to get it going again"? does this mean repair
installation or she reinstalled herself?

It sounds like MAYBE what happend was the laptop came with 2 partitions from
the factory... one probably hidden and used as a backup image. My guess is
that when she reinstalled it probably saw the second small partition and she
chose that one to install to and this latest install of xp is primary on
boot up and on that small partition.

btw, you really should be using service pack 2.

 

[Guest]

"She used her win xp cd to get it going again"? does this mean repair
installation or she reinstalled herself?

It sounds like MAYBE what happend was the laptop came with 2 partitions from
the factory... one probably hidden and used as a backup image. My guess is
that when she reinstalled it probably saw the second small partition and she
chose that one to install to and this latest install of xp is primary on
boot up and on that small partition.

btw, you really should be using service pack 2.


Regarding "She used her win xp cd to get it going again"? does this mean repair

installation or she reinstalled herself?

I wasn't there at the time and she can't remember so I'm afraid I can't
answer that one added to which neither of us is particularly computer savvy.

You're right of course about using SP2 it's what was on the laptop pre-crash
and now she can't download it again because of the small memory problem (I
think).

So is there a way to get the computer to boot up using the larger partition
or am I being stupidly optimistic? Like I said we aint au fait computer-wise.