Partition the entire drive as ONE partition

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fishermun
  • Start date Start date
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Fishermun

Hi. I have an older laptop computer that when purchased had 2 partitions (C
and D) WinXP (SP-1) preinstalled on it. Can I remove the "D" drive without
loosing the operating system on the "C" drive. I can reinstall everything
that was on the "D" drive. I want to have one partition, and then I can
install SP-2 on it. The "C" drive was not a large partition when I purchased
the computer, and now find that if I try to install SP-2 there might not be
enough room on the "C" drive. All I have with the computer are the Winxp
CD's, but they are not a full Winxp, they are just for restoring, or
rebuilding the system in case of a problem. I burned the files to CD when I
purchased the computer. Thanks.
 
Fishermun said:
Hi. I have an older laptop computer that when purchased had 2 partitions (C
and D) WinXP (SP-1) preinstalled on it. Can I remove the "D" drive without
loosing the operating system on the "C" drive. I can reinstall everything
that was on the "D" drive. I want to have one partition, and then I can
install SP-2 on it. The "C" drive was not a large partition when I purchased
the computer, and now find that if I try to install SP-2 there might not be
enough room on the "C" drive. All I have with the computer are the Winxp
CD's, but they are not a full Winxp, they are just for restoring, or
rebuilding the system in case of a problem. I burned the files to CD when I
purchased the computer. Thanks.
Click to expand...

How big is your C drive and how much free space is there?

Alias

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You would have to use third party software.
What is the size of each partition?
How much free space?
 
Fishermun said:
Hi. I have an older laptop computer that when purchased had 2
partitions (C and D) WinXP (SP-1) preinstalled on it. Can I remove
the "D" drive without loosing the operating system on the "C" drive.
I can reinstall everything that was on the "D" drive. I want to have
one partition, and then I can install SP-2 on it.
Click to expand...


Unfortunately, no version of Windows provides any way of changing the
existing partition structure of the drive nondestructively. The only way to
do what you want is with third-party software. Partition Magic is the
best-known such program, but there are freeware/shareware alternatives. One
such program is BootIt Next Generation. It's shareware, but comes with a
free 30-day trial, so you should be able to do what you want within that 30
days. I haven't used it myself (because I've never needed to use *any* such
program), but it comes highly recommended by several other MVPs here.

Whatever software you use, make sure you have a good backup before
beginning. Although there's no reason to expect a problem, things *can* go
wrong.
 
Hi, I just looked at the other laptop, and it has 1.07 GB free on the "C"
drive, and 5.13 GB free on the "D" drive. I believe that the total drive
capacity is 20 GB. What I want to do is install SP-2 on it. It now has SP-1,
but am not sure how much more space is required for SP-2. It is the HOME
edition.
 
Fishermun said:
Hi, I just looked at the other laptop, and it has 1.07 GB free on the
"C" drive, and 5.13 GB free on the "D" drive. I believe that the total
drive capacity is 20 GB. What I want to do is install SP-2 on it. It
now has SP-1, but am not sure how much more space is required for
SP-2. It is the HOME edition.
Click to expand...

A fresh install of XP SP2 I did recently took up about 2.5GB, so you are
seriously undersized. It would be good for you to back up all your data
and use a third-party partitioner like Partition Magic to combine your
partitions. After you've installed SP2, do some tidying up after you
are sure you will not want to uninstall SP2.

Tidying up after SP2 by Alex Nichol:

"A very big restore point will have been made. Once a new regular size
one has been made in the ordinary way, clean up by going to Start - All
Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Cleanup and in 'More
Options' click the bottom button to remove all but the most recent
restore point.

"Delete the hidden folder of files that would be restored by an
Uninstall: C:\Windows\$NTServicePackUninstall. Once done, if you try to
use the 'Remove' for Service pack 2 in Add/remove programs, that will
fail and offer to remove itself.

"There may also be a large folder C
\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download depending on how you did the
installation. That can also be deleted.

"Check that the installation's temporary folder did get properly removed
- it will be on the drive where you downloaded the setup files, so
probably C: and have a long name of random letters. If it is still
around, delete it. And burn the downloaded file to a CD so as to have
it if you ever need to reinstall.

"There will also be a large folder C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles. Do not
delete this - it will be used in future by Windows File Protection -
but on an NTFS disk you can compress it to save about 200MB of disk
space. R-click on it, Properties, click the Advanced button, and select
'Compress'."

Again, merging partitions can go sour; make sure you've backed up all
your data and are prepared for The Worst (clean install of Windows).

Malke
 
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