xp install

[mc1969uk]

when i upgrade from winME to winXP or do a clean install from DOS can anyone help in determining how come i loose 5 gig of my HD before i have installed any other programes..

i have a 20gig HD and after install or upgrade it only leaves me with just under 15gig left surely it carnt take 5 gig to set up the opperating system, does anyone else have this problem???.

i have also tryed converting from FAT32 to NTFS and i still have the same problem..

can anybody help me or give me some idea why this has happened.?.

thanx

 

[Lonman]

If you have a copy of partition magic you can go in and see if you have any free space (unallocated space) on the drive. Or, if you have a Win98 boot floppy, you can run Fdisk to look at your partition information.

What program are you getting the information from? There are several ways you can look at your disk capacity in XP. I'll give you two. First, Go to Control Panel> System> "Hardware" tab> "Device Manager" button> Expand Disk Drives> right click on your drive and select properties> "Volumes" tab> hit the "populate" button: this will give you some basic drive information - what's your capacity? Second way, open Windows explorer> right click on your C: drive and select properties> on the first page of that window (General tab) it will give you used, free, and total drive capacity.

 

[mc1969uk]

thanks but ive not got partition magic....right ive just uninstalled XP and now running ME and ive gained the missing 5gig
so why does it need so much room ?

 

[Lonman]

It doesn't. What program was telling you that you only had 15 gig of free space? And conversely, which one was telling you that XP was taking up 5 gig of space? You're back with ME so i guess it's now all moot anyway.

I'm not sure how much XP takes, i think it's around 1 to 1.5 gig.

 

[mc1969uk]

When i go to my computer thats where it shows up only having 14gig instead of 19gig like its showing me now with ME installed i want to go back to XP at sometime but not when iam lossing 5gig

as things stand at the moment ive just started to put programs back on and ive used up 1gig.....its when XP goes on as just up grade or full install that i loss 5gig?

i think 5gig is a lot to loss for just a up grade and need to know how fix it so it does,nt take 5gig before i go back to XP

 

[Lonman]

XP, installed by itself, does NOT take 5 gig. Not even close, at the VERY most a quarter of that. If you're getting those results after an upgrade then of course it will take more space because of all your programs and what-not.

Even if it did take that much, the trade-off for a VASTLY superior operating system is worth the trade of what, 5 cents to the megabyte these days? If that's the ONLY reason you're staying with ME, then go with Win95 - that sucker only takes a teaspoon of hard drive space.

 

[mc1969uk]

right so if XP does,nt who does or what does? all i know when i put XP on i loss 5gig which to me is a lot os space to loss for a upgrade

ok smart ass why is it when i do a clean installed from DOS as xplained how to do it somewhere in this forum with NO other OP System i still loss a lot of space?

 

[UniSol]

I had a problem like this, What I did was format and fdisk, delete all partitions, add primary, format, install XP.

hehe😀

 

[jw50]

Its not XP (the OS) that takes up that much hard drive space but depending on how much memory you have XP can reserve that much hard drive space for the pagefile (swapfile) and hibernate. If you really need the space it can be recovered by turing off hibernate and reducing the pagefile.

 

[Lonman]

I recommend sticking to ME. You haven't even begun troubleshooting your compatiblity issues concerning XP and you're whining about hard disk space. Smart ass.

 

[PsychoSpongeBob]

OK this might help out.

For one thing you aren't losing 5 gigs, it is all being used until you tell XP how you want it to use the space. If you have the space on your hard drive XP will use as much as it can. My way in installing XP was as follows:

1.Boot from a 98 floppy with cd-rom support
2.fdisk and delete all partitions and then recreate leave fat32
3.run format c: /u ( the switch tells it to do an unconditional format, one that clears the disk completely and cannot be reversed with the Unformat command, a regular format with no switch doesnt get rid of the data just rewrites the sectors and MBR).
4. reboot with the 98 floppy again and run the setup on XP disc (away ya go).

About the HD space it takes up, it varies on how much ram and how big of a HD you have. Here is a pretty simple breakdown on how XP uses disk space on a fresh install with no tweaking:

XP system files, drivers, and programs = approx. 1-1.5 gb
A default 12% allocation for restore feature on a 20gig HD = 2.4gb
Hibernation feature = approx. 300-500 mb
Paging file a.k.a. swap file with 256 ram = 300-500mb

all totals approx 4-4.9 gb (theres your missing 5 gb)

Want to tweak just disable hibernation, make a static 350 mb paging file, take the restore allocation down to 500 mb and you will only be using approx. 1.5-2.5 gb

This might explain a few things. Hey XP is an OS prime for tweaking.

JUST TWEAK IT

 

[mc1969uk]

so its just a matter of tweaking XP to regain some of the space back.will try that
thanks now i see where its going.....cheeRS

spec:
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 1000 Mhz
Total Physical Memory 1,023.43 MB
20gig HD