Laptop partition management

[David L]

I need a step by step listing to repartition a factory NTFS formatted
XPPRO without having to reinstall from scratch and then reapply
patches, configuration, etc. My next step is to apply a boot manager
to the laptop while keeping XPpro happy.

I understand from another newsgroup thread that W2K onwards there are
at least a register key "HKLM\SYSTEM\Setup\SystemPartition" that need
to be adjusted. (see thread 4 at
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...=ISO-8859-1&q=xp+partition&meta=group%3Dalt.*)

Concerns over Windows Product Activation exist because I have a habbit
of losing software keys. Other difficulties include:
1) the 20G harddisk is not very portable as it is in a laptop with
warranty;
2) I do not have a floppy on laptop. I have spent the money for a USB
floppy on
things like Partition Magic instead.

I do have these additional resources (besides you experts on the net)
1) two firewire ports on the laptop, and an external harddisk case
with firewire interface.
2) A CD burner still usable from an existing desktop. The external
firewire
casing can take that CD burner.

I also have been lucky so far. Using Partition Magic 8 I was able to
create FAT data partitions from the previously single 20G NTFS
partition. This will allow the laptop data to be communicated to older
OS such as W98SE which will be added once the boot manager is up and
running.

I would like to learn from experiences from people in the two
newsgroups (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment and
alt.os.windows.xp) who have already successfully done configuration
changes on XP beyond what I have already done. I am very much worried
by reading about XP's hard coded partition information within the
installation.

Thanks in advance for sharing your insights and apologise for
X-posting.

David
5th Jul 2003

 

[David L]

Bruce,

I do not think my Asus book that came with laptop has anything to say
about changing os, or these things.

I do not see why there is a warranty impact on hardware, when I change
software. Desktop buyers add change components and software all the
time, and I am not opening up the laptop.

By the way, I am unsure whether 3rd party products such as Partition
Magic can deal with registry specifics when partitions are moved, etc.

David