Xp Partitions Question

[gb3 0]

2 questions I hope someone can help me with.I'm trying to recover from some unknown system prob. Reinstalled XP and got the system back to booting properly but with a few difficulties.1. The system still sees one hard drive (250G) with 3 partitions: C (8M), D (85G), and E (147G). While I installed XP on this drive, I installed on part D (for space reasons - I'm still not sure how this small C: Part is happening). I'm concerned that some while installing some apps, these apps assume XP is installed on C: (not D:) - for instance, when I tried to install Java, it informed me that that there wasn't sufficient room. Is this small C: problem a result of how I recovered the drive? Is there any way to gracefully reassign Part mappings (e.g., call D: as C:) without creating new problems? My recollection is that I saw this or something similar to it before, I tried merging C: and D: (Partition Magic) and that's when my most recent round of troubles began.2. I'd appreciate advice on this item too ... In my effort to deal with problems reinstalling XP this round, I ended up installing XP on both D: (originally reported as problematic) and then E: After I got the system to boot up properly (from D:), I then deleted the Win folder on E:, but on startup, the system still believes there are two XP boot options available. What can I do to remedy this? Thanks.

[dre 0]

Do you need all those partitions, or do you just want to have XP on the whole hard drive without any complaining?

[serverph 0]

better to start everything from scratch, partition your drive into sizes you want, and simply reinstall XP. much easier than to look for solutions which may easily add more problems to that you already have. by the looks of it, it's problematic enough already. deal with it the "easy" way or else you'd be turning yourself bald pulling your hair for tweaks which would create havoc on your system down the road. but first, do a backup of important files on your existing installation before you go with a reformat, repartition, reinstall.

[de4thpr00f 0]

The c drive with the 8mb is needed to store info of the drive, that's why you can't merge it.your solution is to delete all the drives and make new partitions, but make sure you give c drive a few more space this time.

[Hagebyhemdata 0]

The c drive with the 8mb is needed to store info of the drive, that's why you can't merge it.
your solution is to delete all the drives and make new partitions, but make sure you give c drive a few more space this time.

Thats right, this 8MB partition stores partition information on the harddrive, but whats odd is that 8 MB "partition" ended up as "C:\", when
it shall be hidden and not associated with any drive letter. Simply backup all necessary data, like your documents, pictures, game saves,
program data. Download Driver Genius or Driver Magician and backup all your hardware drivers, so you after the Windows XP installation,
can install the rest of the hardware that XP installation didnt installed for you. In the first step of the XP installation you may delete all of your
partitions. When I'm helping people with system recovery, I use to advise my customers, making two partitions (if you only have one harddrive)
one for Windows XP and Programs, and the other one a backup partition for your necessary data. By doing that you are easy off to go if
somethings happens with your Windows XP partition drive. In your case I suggest (now depending of how many programs or how big they are,
that you are using) 80 GB for your C:\(Windows and Programs) Partition and 160 GB for your D:\(necessary data), like documents, pictures, music
movies...
When you have made your partitions on your harddrive you will see a spare partition about 8MB big, which you cannot delete or merge,
It have to be there. Do not put a driver letter to it.

Hope I could be to your help, good luck!

[FLaKes 0]

Its usually a problem when you have your xp partition in c or any other drive, and you want to install applications like java in a different drive. I had this problem so much that I backed up everything and formatted the drive and did two separate xp partitions with my files in an external hard drive and regular use programs in the xp partitions. Im also thinking that the small 8meg partition that you have for c: could be your boot partition, but I dont know why it has c: assigned to it, it will definitely keep on giving you issues with applications, and I highly recommend you do as serverph said. Backup, format, and remake the partitions.

[omarsdali 0]

2. I'd appreciate advice on this item too ... In my effort to deal with problems reinstalling XP this round, I ended up installing XP on both D: (originally reported as problematic) and then E: After I got the system to boot up properly (from D:), I then deleted the Win folder on E:, but on startup, the system still believes there are two XP boot options available. What can I do to remedy this? Thanks.

To remove the second xp entry from showing up in the boot menu on startup, you have to edit the boot.ini file (it's the file where xp stores all the boot information) and delete the line for the xp that's on the E: partition. To do that open the run dialog and type "C:\boot.ini" or "D:\boot.ini" it depends on which partition the file is stored on. This will open up the boot.ini file in the notepad so you can edit it. It will look something similar to this:

[boot loader]timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Now in your boot.ini file, under the [operating systems], you will have two lines, that's why it thinks there are two XP installations, you have to delete one of those lines, delete the one that points to the E: partition. Be carefull not to delete the line that's pointing to the D: partition by accident or you machine won't boot up anymore. Next, save the boot.ini file and reboot, you should have only one xp entry on startup this time.

1. The system still sees one hard drive (250G) with 3 partitions: C (8M), D (85G), and E (147G). While I installed XP on this drive, I installed on part D (for space reasons - I'm still not sure how this small C: Part is happening). I'm concerned that some while installing some apps, these apps assume XP is installed on C: (not D:) - for instance, when I tried to install Java, it informed me that that there wasn't sufficient room. Is this small C: problem a result of how I recovered the drive? Is there any way to gracefully reassign Part mappings (e.g., call D: as C:) without creating new problems? My recollection is that I saw this or something similar to it before, I tried merging C: and D: (Partition Magic) and that's when my most recent round of troubles began.

If the boot.ini file is on the C: partition then you can't reassign C: as D: and D: as C:, I would recommend that you do a clean install of XP to avoid any problems in the future. During the setup process, you can try to delete C: and D: partitions and then create a new partition and install xp in that partition. If that doesn't work you will have to repartition the whole hard drive.

Don't forget to back up you data and good luck!!