I have an HP Pavillion 514N. It came with a factory OEM version of Windows
XP Home, which has gone through many patches issued by Microsoft. The manual
says that given my circumstances I could very easily remove the FAT file
partition. If I do so I won't have the factory restore and will have to do
it from the System CD Disks that the HP provided software created for me:
all 8 of them. The machine dates to 2003. It is a Celeron 2.2Ghz processor
with 512MBs of RAM on a 60 GIG HDD, with a 5 GIG FAT partition that is
locked. How do I unlock and meld the FAT partition into the rest of the HDD?
Thank you ahead of time.

Steve Turner wrote:
Some third party application. I cannot see the benefit of doing this,
however.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:35:30 -0700, "Steve Turner"
<stevezygote@ohnoyadont.com> wrote:



You can not, at least not with native Windows facilities.

However, in my view, you would be better off *not* doing this, and
keeping the restore partition. It's extra insurance, and it doesn't
use a very big part of your hard drive. But if you do want to do it,
read below:


Unfortunately, no version of Windows before Vista provides any way of
changing the existing partition structure of the drive
nondestructively. The only way to do what you want is with third-party
software. Partition Magic is the best-known such program, but there
are freeware/shareware alternatives. One such program is BootIt Next
Generation. It's shareware, but comes with a free 30-day trial, so you
should be able to do what you want within that 30 days. I haven't used
it myself (because I've never needed to use *any* such program), but
it comes highly recommended by several other MVPs here.

Whatever software you use, make sure you have a good backup before
beginning. Although there's no reason to expect a problem, things
*can* go wrong.


--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

"Shenan Stanley" <newshelper@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:eEOg23vpIHA.4672@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
Well I wanted to muck about with Ubuntu in a dual boot scenerio.

"Ken Blake, MVP" <kblake@this.is.an.invalid.domain> wrote in message
news:rd7414p9sjpq5c46tr6tob3poif8rpj0i6@4ax.com...
I'm obsessive compulsive about backing up so that's no problem. I wanted to
do a dual boot with Windows XP and the new Ubuntu 8.04. But now I'm having
second thoughts. As someone else pointed out, the FAT partition isn't taking
up a lot of space. As it currently sits, with all the programs I want
loaded, I have 32GIG left over. Thanks for you pointing me in the direction
of some programs.

Steve Turner wrote:
Shenan Stanley wrote:
Steve Turner wrote:
Great.

Download and install VirtualBox and then download an ISO image for Ubuntu
and run it inside a VirtualBox virtual machine.

No muss, no fuss - easy and safe with minimal effort and maximum gain.

VirtualBox
http://www.virtualbox.org/

Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
(Check the FAQs at VirtualBox to see what runs on it and what doesn't...)

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:39:00 -0700, "Steve Turner"
<stevezygote@ohnoyadont.com> wrote:


You're welcome. Glad to help.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

"Steve Turner" <stevezygote@ohnoyadont.com> wrote in message
news:e39HpI5pIHA.5096@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
You do need to be aware that many backup utilities will not produce bootable
drives; they require a running OS install to be of any value.

The recovery partition you are probably talking about is probably what will
help you get that running OS install.

Get another drive for Ubuntu. Drives are cheap, and you will only need to
play with a boot loader rather than partitioning utilities. This is much
safer and easier.

HTH
-pk