Ok, I built my PC and installed what I thought was a legal copy of Win XP pro. Turned out it was a fake, no big deal. So I obtained a copy from my ork using their CD Key. Only problem is....I have a brand new 250 Gig drive and I just checked...it says that there are 111 gig being used already. Something is wrong. I tried to use the Win Xp install disk to reformat it, but I did not recover any space.

I beleive the problem is that the fake copy that was installed was a newer version of XP them my current CD. The fake version had SP2, where as my version from work did not have SP2 and I had to download it.

Is this the reason I cannot get rid of my old, crappy version of XP?

Is there a download out there that I can get to completely wipe out my hard drive? I want it to back to new, I don't care about any information on the HD as it is brand new

Did you delete any existing partitions (in addition to reformatting) during the installation?

And you are saying that the space is being shown as used, not that it just doesn't show up, right (that could indicate another problem of only recognizing disk sizes up to like 127GB or so if I remember correctly)?

Also, if you have access to another machine, you can always put this in as an extra drive and delete partitions / format that way.

Ok, so after I saw the 111 gig being used.....I decided to reformat aagin using the only Win XP disk I have, the one with no SP2. I deleted the only partition that was shown of 230G. After the install now I show my had drive as being only 2 percent used but it only sees 127g of my 250g hard drive.

What do I do?

I just want to format my hard drive completely

Sorry, been away today...

So, what does your bios say the drive's size is? You might need a bios update to recognize the full disk size. It's not connected to a PCI ATA card or anything, is it?

Also, have you looked at this article?

How to enable 48-bit Logical B...k drives in Windows XP

My bios see it as a 250gig drive. It is a SATA drive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte 

When you create your partition for windows make it about 15Gb in size. Then install Windows onto that partition. Once you gone through the install crap you need to find computer management off the Control Panel under Adminastrive Tools.

Go down to disk management and you create the rest of your partitions from there

If you want images to show you where to look then just ask mate

I don't have or want any partitions. I just want one HD with 250 gig

Well that ain't gonna happen mate. 130Gb is the largest any partition can be. So you are at least gonna need a 130Gb and a 120Gb partition or just stick with 1 partition of 130Gb.

Thats the way it is and if you don't like it then tough.

So you are telling me that no matter how big a SATA HDD is that it can only see 127gig? I have no problem with making 2 partitions, but I just think that it is odd. What factor limts that?

Its Windows that limits it I think.

And yes thats what I am saying.

I personally run 10Gb for Windows and then split the rest of my 200Gb SATA drive 50/50 between programs and files

Pre-SP1 versions of XP were limited to around 130GB, but since SP1 you should be okay running much larger partitions. Personally, I'm running two 149GB partitions with no problems. I have no idea what the maximum partition size SP1 and 2 can handle, but it isn't limited by either FAT32 or NTFS file systems. In theory, SP1 and 2 should be able to handle any partition regardless of it's size.

Thats news to me...... Ok I am wrong, stick a broom up my ass and use me as a puppet

"stick a broom up my ass and use me as a puppet"

^I wanna party with that guy!

Ok, well the CD that I use only has SP1. So I am just going to do 3 partitions, one of 50, one of 100 and the 3rd is ~100gig.

Hopefully it works

It ought to

quote:

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Originally posted by: Ashton_Dad
Ok, well the CD that I use only has SP1. So I am just going to do 3 partitions, one of 50, one of 100 and the 3rd is ~100gig.

Hopefully it works

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If you have internet access and a CD burner, you can download SP2 and slipstream it to a new install disk. You can do this manually or with a program like nLite. Here are some links:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm
http://www.nliteos.com/
http://ryanvm.msfn.org/ (note: his current version doesn't work with the most recent version of nLite)