creating a partition

[redeyes]

hello all! I currently am using windows 98 se and want to create a seperate partition to install windows xp. When I use fdisk to create a new partition is says "primary dos partiton already exist" and the usage is at a "100%" and am unable to create a new partition. Do i need something else to create a new partition? What am I doing wrong here? I read in some of the other forums that partition magic is a good program but do I have to buy a program to create a partition?
I'm kind of newb to this kind of stuff so if any you can give me the most basic of details it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks All! L8r

[pillainp]

Try otu Ranish Partition Manager at www.ranish.com . It is free and comes with a great dual boot tool called XOSL. There is a full tutorial on the site.

On a totally (?) unrelated vein, I saw a guy create a partition on Windows 98 from unpartitioned space using FDISK, and that too from within Windows. Worked great and I learned one for ten I taught him. Just goes to show (Are the gurus listening)???

[Doobie]

You have to delete the current partition in order to create another one, this being that you have only one partition... Keep in mind that you will lose all your data...

You don’t need partition magic to make partitions… Partition magic is great if you want to crate or resize partitions without losing data…

How big is your current hard drive? How many partitions will you have in total?

You need to delete primary partition.
Then Create Primary partition again
Than add the size you want it… Example is 50%
Then add extended partition
Then add Logical Partition. You can make different sizes here… or you could just use left over space…
After you finish making partitions don’t forget to set active partition.

You will have to reboot than format hard drive.

Or you could just download Zero Fill from your hard drive manufacture and just follow the instructions that they give you.

NOTE: YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOU DATA ON HARD DRIVE

[not important]

http://fdisk.radified.com/
This site has an excellent tutorial on FDisk.

[GaryRouth]

Late post here (been busy) -

If you are happy with your current Win98se setup, and it's working well, and you want the absolute easiest path to adding XP, you could just buy an extra hard drive (if you have room left) and install XP on that. XP will even make the multiboot menu for you. Windows 98 won't even know that XP is there (if you let XP use it's NTFS file system), but XP will be able to "see" the Win98 files.

The easiest way to do this with only one drive would in fact be Partition Magic. It will let you leave Win98 as it is, and non-destructively create a partition for XP. And Partition Magic can be had for as little at $28.

If you have time on your hands, don't mind troubleshooting little problems that crop up for quite a while, and want to learn more about your computer (and have complete backups of all critical data you wish to keep), are willing to completely reinstall everything since the 1st day your computer arrived, then any of the other posts have steered you to the right places.

Sounds like fun either way
. . . Gary

[bearcub]

I have used "Partition Magic." I wanted to use my computer while I reloaded my ME O/S. It takes time to use it, and it is not recommended for novices. But being a novice, I didn't know any better. Some how, I worked though the problems. The "Paritition Magic" web-site helped with some tutorials. It can mess up your drive, if you are not careful, so be careful.

It did what I wanted it to do. But, it took a day to do it, and about 2 months getting the new bootable operating system up to par.

I like the idea of the extra drive. Makes more sense to me if you have the money.

[mystvearn]

fdisk