help needed on reinstall

spud · #1 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 07:07 PM

had to reinstall windows xp pro today

the instalation was on top of xp home so i could have just upgraded but i went for a complete install all was ok for a while on the instalation then i had to install in to a partition of which i know nothing about
any way installed ok

but now when i am starting to install other things i am getting your partition is full

the partition that i installed xp in to was f: which is being classed as a local drive i have a nice big c: with loads odf space in it

can i move xp in to just the c:/ and lose the f:/

also some of my keyboard buttons have been mixed up on the upper case

would it be easier to do another complete reinstall if so would i have lost xp home off the machine as it cane installed when i bought it

i can not use system restore because it has been suspended because lack of space in the f:/

i am getting well irritable now

brain_damage · #2 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 08:56 PM

do you get the chance to boot up into either versions of XP?

I think windows will always put the main drive as C

to change drive letters ...go to Control Panel--Admin tools--Computer Management--Disc Management if you right click on the drives you have a choice to change letter or path and to delete the partition you longer want

spud · #3 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 09:05 PM

yea ok

but i need to update some drivers in f drive which i cant because there aint enough room the f drive is only just over 1 gig in size
so how can i increase the partition size to allow this or can i copy everything to the c drive then delete the f drive

spud · #4 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 09:44 PM

i have the option to either boot in to xp or xp pro f i try the standard xp an error message comes up

brain_damage · #5 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 09:52 PM

how much space have you got on your hard drive?
how many partitions have you got?
can you boot either into safe mode?

spud · #6 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 09:56 PM

i have two partitions

i have 66 gig free on hdd

can not boot in to safe mode

brain_damage · #7 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 10:25 PM

if you reformat have you got all the data you need ? or have you another machine and set this hard drive up as slave and take the data you need then reformat the the drive and put XP pro on, doing this is the easy way I think but you may have trouble with the MBR(thats easy to sort out)

spud · #8 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 10:31 PM

what data will i need and what is the MBR

brain_damage · #9 (**permalink**) 03-11-2005, 10:46 PM

any files or folders you've put on (music etc)

What is the MBR?

At the end of the ROM BIOS bootstrap routine, the BIOS reads and executes the first physical sector of the first floppy or hard disk on the system. This first sector of the hard disk is called the master boot record (or sometimes the partition table or master boot block). There is a small program at the beginning of this sector of the hard disk. The partition information, or partition table, is stored at the end of this sector. This program uses the partition information to determine which partition is bootable (usually the first primary DOS partition) and attempts to boot from it.

OK I pinched this from M$ but it explains it better than I can

jephree · #10 (**permalink**) 04-11-2005, 02:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spud

i have the option to either boot in to xp or xp pro f i try the standard xp an error message comes up

What is the error message?

From what I read you should have chosen the Upgrade Install but that's water under the bridge as they say.

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...of+home&qt_g=1

What type of XP Pro CD do you have? Is it a full retail version or an Upgrade version? Not an OEM version is it?
If full then you should be able to reformat the whole drive & install XP as brain_damage points out.
If an Upgrade you can do the same but you will need proof of a previous version of windows i.e. another windows CD.
During installation you will be asked to insert the old CD to prove you had a previous windows since Home will have been deleted by the format.
You will also lose all data on that hard drive.
A clean install should have let you format the entire drive. Since it did not you might need to run FDisk to format that drive.

http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/