Thread: To delete all partitions and start from scratch

I have laptop and that drive have 4 partitioned, but the C partition is small and is now giving error messages about no more space. I tried Norton Partition Magic, but it shows that it will combine C and D into a 12GB volume, I click to "Apply", it shows a "Must restart to see the changes" message. After restart, there not any change.

Boot to the install CD, delete all partitions, make one or two partitions, and install XP. I cannot figure out how to get into the setup screen. Luckily, starting the XP "Setup" while booted to the hard drive gets it to restart in the CD. I could boot to a Windows 98 CD, format one volume FAT32 install 98, restart to the hard drive, put in the XP CD, boot to it, adjust format to NTFS, and install, but it looks like a very convoluted me. Suggest any easier solution.

With XP and anything latest like Vista or the future new version of Windows 7 you won't need Fat32 but NTFS there. The XP installer can delete partitions with see new ones created and formatted to NTFS as part of the installation method. But you won't be able to resize partitions like the latest versions are now seeing.

For partitioning drives many will choose to use a drive partitioning software or the free Linux drive tool known as GParted for practically all. The benefit of GParted over Partition Magic and other softwares being able to make Fat16, Fat32, and NTFS partitions and those for other operating systems. The free tool can also get smaller or grow presented partitions.

What merging there would be for the two partitions C, D would be just deletion of the D partition followed by increasing the C primary to fill in the space? You should see something important backed up from the drive before going forward with any changes first however. But that would be the fast way to go away the current installation intact only increasing the C into the drive left free when removing the second D partition.