Partitioning and DEpartitioning in XP

chewyflex

New Member
Hello, I'm a new user on the forum and I have a quesiton. I recently had a computer built for me with a Soyo Dragon Ultra motherboard. It's running on XP and has an 80GB hard drive. He wanted to partition the drive, even though I had no idea what this would do for me, nor did I really care because I would have just filled up all three partitions carelessly anyway! Anyway, as soon as I had my internet hooked up, I was bombarded with viruses and trojans and decided to clean up everything he had done on my computer and just have a fresh start. Originall, I had a 25GB partition, one that was 30 and another that was 25 too. When I formatted to reinstall XP, it asked me if I wanted these 3 partitions, and I said no. I assumed it would consolidate all 3 into one and I would have all 80 gigs on the one hard drive available. Turns out, now, my hard drive is only 25 gigs and my PC is running slow (probably also a memory issue), but I only have a few gigs left and I would like to free up the rest. I have plans to format again because I am having some other problems in some of my programs, but right now, this is my main concern (I am willing to "departition" during a format is basically what I'm saying). If anyone can help, the adice would be greatly appreciated. This is my first computer since I've been independent from my parents andf I'd like to be able to figure this one out on my own! Thanks a lot.

-Ty
 
Use a bootdisk and type fdisk at the prompt. Use this tool to repartition the HD into 1 and then boot from the XP CD. You should be able to refomat and have the entire 80gigs available in one partition. Get a firewall and antivirus program to avoid this in the future too, before hooking up the internet maybe...
 
Thanks for the reply. I had a feeling I'd be doing something of that nature. I certainly will get a Firewall and Virus scanner, in fact, I already have a virus scanner. Just on a different topic, what would you say to be a good virus scanner now, and a good firewall? Thanks.
-Chewy
 
ZoneAlarm is good, and I've heard good things about BlackIce, as well. I went with a hardware firewall-- many switches and oruters have firewalling built in, or you could take an unused older computer and install Smoothwall or some other firewall OS.
 
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