My sister´s got a brand new bag!

[Visionary]

Hi, folks,

My sister just dropped by with her new laptop and it´s one sassy little critter of a P4.
However, I´m rocking my brain trying to figure out how to create a new partition for her stuff.
The laptop comes with only one disk, a 100GB one and Partition Magic won´t allow me to mess with it (says some nonsense about "the selected disc contains one or more partitions which cannot be moved").

The machine came with a rWinXP estore CD, but my guess is even if I format the whole disk, it´ll just reinstall everything as before.

Help.

[doctorgonzo]

What does it say in Disk Management? (Right click on "My Computer", select Manage, then Disk Management.

Could you post a screenshot of what the console shows?

[Visionary]

It says

(C: ) Partition NTFS healthy

I can´t post screengrabs since I´m on a different computer.

I´d really like to make her a new partition so that her work will be safe if she ever has to reinstall Win XP.

[foolishone]

Look down at the bottom. Is there just one big block, or is there a block that says unallocated(black) or free space(green). Right click and make a new logical drive or partition. If not, I used this. It works, but you have to reinstall the OS. In the link, just make one small partition, install the OS, and when you get into windows you will see the leftover space as 'free space' in disk manager, which you can create as many partitions as you want, I have 7 partitions.

^fo

[mairving]

Are you trying to move the partition? You should resize it first, creating unused space and then create it.

Originally Posted by Visionary The machine came with a rWinXP estore CD, but my guess is even if I format the whole disk, it´ll just reinstall everything as before.

You realize that if it does that, then your plan of creating a new partition to save her files on it would be wasted. So if I were going to do it I would reinstall from the restore CD and see if you have the option to create your partitions.

I gave up on doing partitions for people awhile back. The biggest problem that you will always encounter is that they still end up installing all of their programs and putting their files on the C partition anyway. So this partition runs out of space and they bring it back to you to fix. Way too much trouble.

[Panama Red]

Have you tried using PM as a boot disk and running the repartitioning that way? My method of making sure folks store their stuff on the non-os partition is to move the My Documents, including My Pics and My Music to the new partition. Can be done easily in Windows Explorer by Right clicking/dragging the My Docs folder to the new partition. Drop it and the pop up window options appear. Select "move here" and you're all set. Even the default My Music location when ripping in Win Media Player becomes the new location. Only thing folks have to remember then is to save their files in My Docs, My Pics, or My Music or add their own sub-folders under My Docs. Most folks put stuff their anyway. Just some ideas.