Something Very odd with my friends computer

[Phalanx]

Well I was over my friends house the other day and he was complaining about his computer taking ages to load anything (it took about 30 seconds to open the start menu) so I thought I might see if it was fragmented.
Now his computer is a compaq and when I opened the Defragmentor, i noticed something a little odd.
He had one partition that was in FAT32 and the main one in NTFS
can anyone give me a reason as to why he has a FAT32 partition on his computer because I really don't know

[timbit]

long start up times? sounds kinda like spyware maybe? does he have adaware and/or spybot search and destroy? if so, update and run them...
what is his OS? if it is xp, go to "start" --> "run" and type "msconfig". check what all is under the startup. if you see anything suspicious, uncheck. good thing to do is google anything you don't recognize.

as for why the two partitions, did he ever upgrade his OS?

[colecifer]

what size was the FAT partition? i have a very small FAT partition on my dell that cotains some hardware tests. It could be something like that, or a recovery partition maybe.

[Phalanx]

Originally Posted by colecifer what size was the FAT partition? i have a very small FAT partition on my dell that cotains some hardware tests. It could be something like that, or a recovery partition maybe.

I was thinking it was a recovery partition as well, it was only about 1.5gigs big

[Panama Red]

Yes, it is the Recovery Partition. If your friend ever decides to install a new operating system, you can download the partition removal tool from Compaq/HP to remove that partition and fully utilize the hard drive capacity.

[KoMoDo]

Originally Posted by Panama Red Yes, it is the Recovery Partition. If your friend ever decides to install a new operating system, you can download the partition removal tool from Compaq/HP to remove that partition and fully utilize the hard drive capacity.

or u can just remove it yourself from the manage option, and then Storage devices or something like that if im not wrong. the HP comp which i am using (rebuilt) had a seagate 120gb 5400 RPM 2MB cache and had the same partitions as u had, so i just got rid of the FAT32 recovery partition.
i say u can even reformat his HD, back it up with an external HD/burn the stuff he needs, and reformat it, that way u get 1-2 nice clean NTFS partitions, plus a fast comp, once u do that, get avg off grisoft.com, ad aware and spybot search and destroy and spywareblaster (All those search on google)

good luck,

KoMoDo