Set Up A New System From Scratch - Partitioning HD
Oct 18, 2004
The question frequently comes up about how to format and install XP from scratch. Following are the steps I take when I get a new system. I mention the "brand names" of software I use not as an endorsement or recommendation, but just for the sake of example.After unpacking and connecting all hardware, here's what I do:1Partition the HD according to my preference, thus deleting everything on the drive (the number and size of partitions is entirely up to the individual user – I prefer several, keeping the OS on c: and various programs, cache folders, swap file and data on other partitions).
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Oct 2, 2006
Using 2 seperate hard drives, I set up the system files on drive D: and the made a blank partition on drive C. I wanted to set up WinXP so that when I install programs they are saved to C: leaveing drive D: for only system files. The problem I am having is that when i install new programs they dont want to be installed to drive C. Instead programs want to be installed to the system drive D. I would just tell programs to install on drive C but some of them will only give me the choice to install to D. How do I set up the partition so that programs will install to drive C?
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Mar 3, 2008
I am having xp in my c partition in my hard drive,if i copy windows 2003 from another hard disk to another partition means the two partition will work fine or not? shall i use windows xp & windows 2003 server.may i able to boot from both xp & windows 2003
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May 31, 2010
I have a computer with an 80GB Hard Drive on it. This HDD had XP on a 50GB Partition, and Linux on a 30GB Partition, installed so I can choose between either operating system with Grub when I boot up. Well, I didn't want Linux anymore, so I used Norton Partition Magic to delete the Linux partition. Now, when I boot, GRUB loads and it just says 'unknown filesystem' and then 'GRUB rescue'.Obviously I didn't realize the GRUB started with Linux first, so now I'm screwed and can't boot.
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Aug 18, 2007
My Windows XP Pro is starting to run slow as all Windows installations
do after time. I BackUp and format once a year to keep everything running
nice and fast. Here is my issue. Since my Last Format I have added two
more drives to my system. I use one as a Backup Drive and the other
as a Video Scratch drive. On the BackUp drive I have set Administrator "Write
Permissions only" on the whole drive because I don't want anything
to happen to it. ( I run myself as a Limited User for safety ).... Now Users can
read and Execute but just can't write to the drive.
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May 12, 2008
I need to reformat the 60Gb drive on my laptop and I would like to partition my hard drive to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. I wanted to put XP Home in one partition and my docs on another.
1. Would 10Gb for the 1st / XP partition and the remainder for the second partition seem reasonable?
2. I will put the MyDocuments folder on the 2nd partition - do I try and install all programs on the 2nd partition, right? The 'Documents and Settings' folder sits on the 2nd partition also, right? I think I want to keep Windows away from everything, to keep it 'pure'.
3. Will any programs try to deposit temporary files application data in the 1st partition - and do I then shift this data over to the 2nd partition?
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Mar 3, 2005
I'm running Home oem and would like to partition my hd. For some reason I didn't seem to be able to when I installed Windows. Do I need to use Partition Magic or can I do it within Windows? I wanna run a dual boot system.
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Mar 23, 2006
Is this something I should try through Fdisc or should I buy Partition Commander? I am learning a lot but don't understand all the ins and outs of the articles I have read concerning partitioning, yet.
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Jan 19, 2005
I have been reading past messages regarding partitioning a drive.I understand why it's done and am interested in doing this myself. The question I have is my computer came with xp already installed so I have no disc to work with.The computer was of course set with the c drive being large, do I just partition the rest of the available space? If so what is the best way to go about this?I have seen programs recommended and also talk of first needing to make the c drive smaller to start with, but have no idea how I can do this since I am starting after the fact.If someone could explain to me how I might best go about this it might help me put all I've read into perspective. I definitely don't want to mess anything up.
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Aug 28, 2005
Is there any way to partition a hard drive in two without having to reinstall the OS? Do I have to buy a seperate program to do it? Or does Windows include some sort of utility that does it?
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Jul 17, 2005
When I check the properties of the C: drive (4 Gb), it shows only about 270 Mb free space, but when I look through the files, to clear out some space on the drive, I seem only to have about 2 Gb used. I have my settings set to view hidden files and the like, but it seems like I'm using twice the amount of space
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Jul 18, 2005
A case of other files in other paritions "spilling over" into the system partition, or does partitioning itself use space that's basically invisible to Windows?
Mike, your setup sounds pretty close to mine. I know I can change the partition sizes, and that's my next plan, but it seems like I've lost 2Gb into the abyss.
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Mar 13, 2008
I have just bought a new hard drive, partitioned it, and had some stuff copied to it.I then deleted the partitions, and set some new ones up (was changing the size of the partitions). I havent put anything on the disk yet.Then, i realise i want some of the stuff (new emails i just received using mozilla) that is on my new disk, prior to me changing the partitions.Is there any way of checking what is on the new disk? I assume windows hasnt actually written over the stuff that i just put on ther
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Aug 18, 2006
I'm an intermediate user just beginning to study for MS sys admin.Both my laptops run XP home, but I have 2000 Pro from when I had a desktop...which I unfortunately gave to a family member. I'd like to install this on one of my laptops because the Pro capabilities will allow me to "study" a little better than just home XP. At any rate, I'd like the experience of configuring everything. will I lose everything in XP if I set up a partition to install 2000 Pro? Is it even possible to install both of them without installing 2000 first? The XP came pre-loaded on my computer but I do have a disk.
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Mar 12, 2007
My personal partitioning scheme is primarily to facilitate a backup routine that I can use easily and regularly. C: drive is 10 GB and holds only my OS; no program files, no data files, no personal settings. E: drive is 58 GB for program files, temporary internet files, downloads and such; no data files. f: drive is 10 GB for Documents and Settings. I: drive is 4 GB and is devoted to a 3 GB fixed pagefile. J: drive is 72 GB for wave files only. K: drive is 8 GB for image files only. L: drive is 30 GB for video editing only. I regularly make images of my C: drive and F: drive. These are my primary backups. Installed program files don't change often. I have my programs' preferences set to store data files on F:. I don't need to backup E: very often; only when I install a new program, or uninstall an old one. Of course, when I make a new image of E:, I also make an image of C: and F: My J: drive is just my CD library ripped to the computer. I still have all the original CD's, so I don't really need to backup this drive very often, either. (I don't care for MP3's). K: drive is the target for my digital camera. I make images of this drive regularly. L: is for temporary use for video editing, and I burn the final edit to DVD, so I don't make images of this drive at all. Defragmenting is quick and easy. Having a permanent pagefile on a dedicated partition keeps it from becoming fragmented. Making backups is simplified, so I actually do it regularly.
And these are backups that will get me up and running in minutes. And before someone says that it won't work properly, I'm sorry but it does. I've tested it extensively, even from one drive to another, and it just works. I used nLite to customize my installation, so programs default to E:, Documents and Settings default to F:. I used internet options in IE7 to relocate temporary internet files for all users on this machine to E: I run AVG Anti-Spyware, Windows Defender, and NOD32 as services for all users, and have nightly scans run automatically-I never turn this machine off. I dump temporary files, defragment, run manual malware scans and HJT before I make an image of any partition. And maybe the best benefit of all? I haven't done a reformat/reinstall since Windows 95.
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Aug 3, 2005
I'm partitioning an external hard drive that's connected to my Win XP machine. I set an 80GB partition for XP (NTFS). When I tried to allocate the rest of the drive as a FAT32 partition (for my Win98 machines), FAT32 was not an option, until I reduced the partition size to 20 GB. I'm using XP's Disk Management. Is there a maximum limitation of FAT32 partition size?
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May 30, 2009
Hoping someone can help. Just reformated my hard drive and since then, everytime I boot up, it asks which OS I want to uses, Windows XP Media Centre or Windows 2003. Don't understand since I have only one system (Media Ctr). Aslo, there is only one HD in my computer and it is not partitioned.
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May 12, 2006
Recently I installed Ubuntu Linux on a partition on my secondary hard drive (it's a worthwhile education, I'll give it that). Since then, when in Windows, the remaining space, used for games, alternates between being accessible and being unaccessible. What's the go?For example, when I go in My Computer and try to open D: drive this is the message i receive:D: is not accessible The parameter is incorrect.
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Sep 15, 2008
I recently decided to try out running OSX on my PC. This post isn't about that, so don't worry about any legal issues. Anyway, I was planning on just using Windows' disk manager to create a new partition, but the guide gave the following instructions using the command line-based 'diskpart'. I figured maybe it would work slightly different than the usual method, so I followed the instructions listed
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Aug 27, 2005
If I partition my hard drive and want to append a partion to the windows xp partition can this be done.Also If I am having problemsdefraging a partition (it say's something about a retore file on it) but this partition does not have an operation system. I just use it to keep web sites I develop on it. How can I defrag it.
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Mar 25, 2006
Is there a way to partition the primary disk on a computer without reformatting?A computer that I inherited (HP Pavillion) has a 120Gb hard drive partitioned into two sections C drive 104Gb NTFS primary D drive 7Gb FAT32 recovery I would like to split the primary into two sections, if possible without reformatting
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Aug 18, 2005
i put fat32 on partition 1 and NTFS on partition 2 on the same hard drive can that be why my system isnt running good because i just installed windows xp on a formatted hard drive and it runs poorly. or can anybody tell me the best way to partition a 40 gig harddrive to get the most out of it....? I thought there was something wrong with my windows xp disk because out of all the times i have fdisk and reinstalled windows it never ran this bad...
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Nov 22, 2009
I have just bought and installed (to the point of completing initialization under Disk Management) a new 1 TB hard drive. Originally, I was planning to use it solely for data storage.However, I am thinking of installing Windows XP Pro and all the programs I currently use on it, thereby making it the new OS and programs drive, while using the original 120 GB HD as a data/backup drive.I think the main appeal of doing this, for me, is that it also presents an opportunity to reinstall Windows on a machine which hasn't had this done for more than three years, and which currently seems to take at least five minutes to boot to a "usable" state, despite having a reasonably high spec for its age (it was bought in 2001, but as a result of the upgrade
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Feb 3, 2008
not being computer literate , i am having a problem with a new hard drive . i took out the old one . i have the windows disc and product codes , but i can't get it to boot to start the windows installation. i have done it on another computer , and the disc begins installing windows on start up. i have tried starting the computer with the disc in place , and without it . obviously , i must be missing something to get it started . the disc is brand new .
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Sep 1, 2009
I have WXP Home, a 160gb HD. Asus Motherboard. I partitioned the C drive with Paragon 9 and moved all my data to the D drive due to some problems and had to format and reinstall windows on the C drive. when I finished and rebooted I could access everything. A short time later I could not access the D Drive, the error message said that I did not have permission. No explanation, Just locked out. I can access folders on the D drive if I search for a folder then copy them across from the search window into the C Drive, or if I boot into Safe Mode. That is no good. I need access from My Computer by clicking on the D Drive Icon. Any suggestions.
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Mar 23, 2010
I have a dwsktop vaio When I boot from cold it does not find hard drive. I get an error message Disk boot failure Insert system disk and press enter. If I restart the computer and go into the bios it does not show the hard drive but when I come out of the bios it then boots up.It will only bootup if I go into the bios first?
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Jun 10, 2008
My computer, a dell dimension 8400 with windows xp home edition, keeps coming up with an error saying:Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: WINDOWSSYSTEM32Configsystem.i ran boot utility and scanned the computer and the drives come up fine with the test(except the hard disk which popped up errors on a constant.)
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Jun 8, 2006
i have windows xp pro installed on my pc along with linux mandrake 10.1 and one day while my dad was surfing the net the sreen turned blue and some type of error message came up and it said to do something if it happend again but i ignored it becuase i thought it wouldnt happen again so i restarted and when it came back on it went to a black sceen and i couldnt do anything but if i let it wait there it would come up with an error saying that windowssystem32config system was missing or corrupt
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Oct 14, 2007
The system can be restored by using the Startup CD and pressing R for recover, but I do not have any cd. The only one I have it the recover cd, but it is my understanding that if I use the recovery cd that I will erase everything from my computer and I can not do this.I tried to read the other threads about the same problem, but to be honest I do not understand them and I just do not have the startup cd - maybe it is the same as the recovery cd?
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Aug 10, 2010
On reinstalling my Windows XP x86 and using Windows Update to get everything back uptodate to the present day. I am having serious problems getting my sound drivers to install. I have tried everything under the sun, also tried a few things which i found while roaming the internet (Mainly google searches for the problem).
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Jul 17, 2005
I have a 2 hard disc system, Windows XP pro and most programmes run from the C Drive. A few, plus all my data run from the F drive. Over the last few days I have encountered a massive slowdown in getting the computer started - form certainly less than 5 minutes to over 20 minutes. I have not added anything to the autoruns at all.
Programmes and data (eg music) run fine if they are on the F drive, but if they are on the C drive they run incredibly slowly so music is fragmented and at times its like trying to wade through treacle to get anything done. I have been getting crashes of the PC with a message about a kernel problem... but haven't yet copied all the data from that to get the detail. When it crashes the next boot reports a disc boot system failure, when i reboot ahgain it loads up but painfully slowly. The C drive was defraggged just afew weeks ago. I'm thinking the drive is about to pack up....
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