Resizing Windows XP partition

if you are worried, dupe your harddrive to a slave. but nothing will happen. PM will handle it. you don't mention type or size of drive so can't say for absolutely sure. just make some 'emergency repair diskettes' like you are prompted to do during the PM install and go for it. PM is very nice tool. couldn't do without it...

you really don't want to resize XP system partition to 10 GB. First off you need to factor in virtual memory which is free space and Windows will use Free space on the primary partition for virtual memory. you could move it to another partition but....

second, applications by default want to be installed to c:\program files\. If you don't change that you'll run out of space very fast.

third with hotfixes, services packs, you want free space because one never knows how much space over time you'll need and they get installed to the system partition.

You don't want to format FAT 16 or FAT 32. the file allocation is bigger therefore you can install less within a given space. NTFS actually gives you more space than FAT/FAT32.

fourth: there is not config.sys and autoexec.bat in Windows XP. Windows XP does not support native DOS mode like W9X does.

Get a bigger drive is your out of space.

note: if your system has 1GB of memory you'll need free space of 1 to 2 times that for virtual memory. If your system currently has 6 GB of space taken for the system with SP2 you need to add in 1 to 2 GB for virtual memory or 7 to 8 GB free space. If you install a 2GB program to C:\program files\ you just filled up your partition without affecting virtual memory. Install another and your now eating into free space for virtual memory and your system will start to bog down or you'll get low disk space or out of memory error messages.

CG IT, chill.

He said shrink his c: by 10GB not make it only 10GB.

Regardless, I'd have a good backup but PM 8.0 has run flawless for me dozens of times without any issues.

Better to be safe than sorry, but PM rocks!

As others here have said you'll need a tool like Partition Magic to do this as the DOD Floppy is only capable of deleting the XP partition not resizing it. The same applies to any Partition FDISK can delete or set them but never resize then.

While Partition Magic would be my first choice there are other programs available to perform this I believe that System Commander has this ability although I've never personally used this program.

Just one thing here you said that you want to reduce the size by 10 GIG and then make 3 partitions of 2 GIG that by my estimation leaves 4 GIG unused is there a reason for this?

With Partition Magic just install it launch the program which will reboot the computer into DOS and then once PM opens all you need do is drag the primary HDD bar back till you have removed 10 GIG of space.

Once this is done chose exit and reboot the system to make sure that it is still running and then shutdown insert the DOD Boot Disk and with FDISK you can create the desired partitions. Once this is done you'll then need to reboot the system and to into System Management and format up the various partitions there is a Partition Wizard that should start running when you click on an unformatted partition although I've never actually tried to format as a FAT32 I'm not sure if this is supported by XP.

You can create a Partition Magic Boot Floppy so that you can undo any thing if you mess up the system.

Col

Something has happened to my tech points. Earlier today I had 1500 points, but now I only have 168. I will go hunting for more. If you have not gotten what i promised, I hope to compensate you later. Since I have no points, I will close this question. All answers were good.
/Local Support

Point value changed by question poster.

This question was closed by the author