EMERGENCY: Just REformated need help.......

N

Nick718

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Ok, i just reformated my HD, deleted all partitions, and I'm at FDisk. I just called Dell, they have no idea what they are talking about. I was origionally going to partition the HD into 2 parts, and put 98 on the first and XP on the second and double boot. He told me that it was impossible to install XP on a secondary partition if you only have the upgrade cd, even though you can do it on a clean disk..... true or not? If it is not true, can someone please give me detailed instructions on how to create two partitions, one that is 10 percent, the primary, and anotehr that is ther est of the HD being the secondary. I have no idea which ones to use, dos partiotn, exteneded, or what, i'm an idiot when it comes to fdisk. Secondly, if I have to resort to isntalling only XP, there are two file systems..... NTFS and FAT 32. He said NTFS is more stable, but can cause compatability issues with games that are older. Should I use NTFS or FAT 32 seeing as I am a very hardcore gammer? If i use FAT 32, how exactly would I do that, he said I would need to make an ative partiotni with Fdisk first, but if I were to go NTFS XP would do it automatically. Please help, I am lost right now.......
 
The easiest way to partition your drives:

(other than using partition magic, of course)

1. Find out the brand of your Hard drive (WD, Seagate, Maxtor, whatever).
2 go to the mnfr website and Download the mnfr Disktools specific for that drive. (usually there are multiple disk tools bundled together and you can transfer what you need to a floppy disk.
3. boot your clean reformatted machine with the disk mnfr floppy (from #2). then follow the instructions on the screen

EASY, FAST, and Works.

As for which type of file system to use: once you go to NTFS you cannot go back to FAT32 without a complete reformat. Most all of the <reasonably> new games work on XP (at least from the Quake II, Unreal era on). If you have games that need to run on DOS you are s........ outta luck with XP. My advice (such as it is:D ) is to try to load XP as your primary, mabe put 98 on a very small second partion only for running those old games of yours, and to use FAT32 all around.

Better yet, dump 98, dump the old games, go XP/NTFS all the way.
Then you can put your old games on an old puter lying around (or donated from someone who upgrades--mabe they will sell it to you for $25:D

anyway good luck.
(Dell......it figures. Next time either build your own or get one with a nice FAST AMD processor)

Course, that's JUST MY OPINION :D :D :D :D
 
Well, I've decided to go all the way, NTFS and XP, no partitions. I've been posting everywhere, and seen so many ways to do this, and it could be such a pain int he ass if it doesnt go well. I decided, for the amount of older games I have, it just wouldnt be worth it to go through all this hassle. And yes, next time I will be building my own machine, when I got this one, it was 3 years ago and I didnt know enough to build my own. Next time around, i'll be taking a small HD and putting it in just for an older OS, and then just using my large one for the main OS. BTW, my other question is....... When I reformat using that damn rescource cd, the only way it lets me... it makes a FAT 32 partition on its own. If i just boot straight to the XP cd after it does this, will XP be able to automatically install with NTFS system?
 
you can install xp on a disc that has been formatted to fat 32 then when you have x p running and you are happy with it you can convert it to ntfs make sure you thats what you want because once you convert to ntfs you cant go back to fat32
the instruction to convert is in x p as a wizard so its dead easy.
 
windows +xp on two boot partions

I have windowsme on one partion +XP on another partion & it works fine I user fdisk to partion the drive into two partions C & D
Then installed windowsme on pation 1 c: and installed XP on partion 2 D: when you install xp it will put a duel boot menu menu automatically at start up at startup you ither select 1 to run windowsme or 2 to run XP this also works with win98 and it works fine. With fdisk when you create primary dos partion dont type yes to user all disk size type no then alter the partion size to you needs hope this is a help:p :p
 
As we have seen this issue can be dealt with in many ways. I just wanted to share with you what I did.

- made a boot disk from Windows ME
- copy Win ME FDISK to floppy.
- FDISK no partition for NTFS (deleted FAT32 partitions)
- boot to XP Pro CD

XP install did the rest, you can select format and partion if you want when installing.

Jim
 
if you have partition magic 7.0 YOU CAN GO BACK TO FAT32 FROM NTFS I know I did it my self and everything has been fine...and the cmd is convert/fs:ntfs
 

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