Clean install of XP - unpartitioned space query

[DAVEM]

Hi

I am doing a clean install of XP Home on a laptop and deleted the two disk
partitions as I wanted to create one partition. But it still keeps the two
unpartitioned spaces separate. How do I make the two unpartitioned spaces
into one - without buying third party software.

Thanks

Davem

 

[DL]

You would appear to be installing from a recovery disk, which puts the PC
back to origonal specification,
so you cannot, without resorting to third party utilities

 

[DAVEM]

Thanks for that.

Yes I am using an original XP CD.

Do you know of any freeware that I can put on a CD and boot up with that
would let me consolidate the unpartitioned space?

Thanks

 

[David B.]

That makes no sense, are you sure you don't have one of those laptops that
actually has 2 physical hard drives in it? Does the laptop have media card
readers in it?
Does the total free space equal the size of the hard drive that's installed.

 

[DAVEM]

This is my son's laptop which had a blue screen and could not boot

It has one 80GB drive which now fails the DST diagnostic.
It does not appear to have any media readers

Setup shows

76317 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi (MBR)

C: Partition 1 (Unknown) 1035 MB (1035 MB free)
D: Partition 2: (Unknown) 75281 MB (75281 MB free)

Thanks,

 

[David B.]

If it fails the diagnostics it's probably bad and needs to be replaced. And
you don't have any unpartitioned space on the drive, you have C (which looks
like a recovery or diagnostics partition) and you have D, which is the
primary partition you want to install to, free space does not get assigned
drive letters, and you have drive letters.

 

[David B.]

Or I should say unpartitioned (or unallocated) space doesn't get assigned
drive letters, free space is actually the unused space in an existing
partition.

 

[DAVEM]

Thanks

Yes good point, at some point it said unpartitioned space but it obviously
did stay like that - I have now deleted both, created one new one and when
formatted and XP is installed I guess I will run chkdsk and see if drive is
terminal.

Thanks for your help.

 

[David B.]

chkdsk won't necessarily detect a failing drive, you need to run the drive
mfg's diagnostic utility which you can get from the drive mfg's website.