is this the right walkthrough site?

hello, i was wondering if this site:
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewstory.php?t=78111

is the right place for me to shrink and create a partition so i can install Windows XP on it...

i'd like to create a small 8 or 9 gig partition just for counterstrike source so i can experience CS:S fuller than with Vista lag and such....

i dont mind restarting the computer and whatnot to get back onto the C drive partition...

is this right?- shrink the partition, restart lappy with XP cd in drive and select the extra 8 or 9 gig partition to install XP? is it that simple? or am i overlooking something?

 

Hello, i got my partition set up, and split... its an 8 gig partition named "New Volume F"... i want to install XP pro in it but when i boot up with the XP disk, i can only see the C partition... How do i fix this??? its a blue, new volume, healthy, "primary partition"... do i leave it unformatted(unallocated?) its an NTFS file system..
what else do i need to do?

i also have an 8 gig D drive, one for storage that was set up in the factory...

that doesnt show up either...

 

may someone please assist me? im getting desperate here and so far searching the forum, no one seemed to be in my situation...

 

Jeesh have a little patience already! It's only been 90 minutes since your last post. Some of us went to dinner! ...big ol' grin...

You are better of having NO partiton at all for this 8 gig where you want to install XP. Go back into Vista delete this partition. Then when you install XP it will find the unallocated area and allow you to create a partition and install all in one fell swoop.

Gary

 

like this? -thanks for responding

i've been trying to complete this since the afternoon...
i wanna see what my puny X3100 can really do with CS:S

so dont make another partition for the XP OS?

but i dont have an unallocated partition. and because of that, it'll ask me to create one.. and thats when i create one right?

lemme try this at the blue screen. as far i remember, it normally asks if i want to overwrite Partition C.

 

That's correct start without a partition on this 8 gig space. It will, as you say ask if you want to overwrite the C: partition, but it will also allow you to select the unpartitoned space as well.

Gary

 

i see where i should be going but now it says that C doesnt have enough space and requires atleast 1124mb of space....

i have a total of 103gigs on C with 56gigs free and a total of 8.25gigs with 1.5 free on D.- no other partitions....

whats wrong??=(

 

at the blue screen, asking which partition you want to select, only "C Partition1" is available. it says it has 974mb(or around there) and has 973 free... and when i attempted to install XP on the C partition, it says it requires 1124 or some MB around there...

 

Now you have me totally confused.

You have two REAL partitons one that is 103 gig and a second one that is 8.25 gigs. In addition to those you also have the 8 gig UNPARTITIONED area too right?

When you go to install XP when it asks you what partition to install to, does it show the two REAL partions? Does it also show the UNPARTITIONED space?

(More in the next reply)

Gary

 

Why are you trying to install to C:? That is an EXISTING partition. We want to install to the, as yet UNPARTITIONED space!!! There should also be some indication at this point that part of the disk is unpartitioned. Are you not seeing that? If you DO see that, there is an option available to CREATE a new partition. You will want to use that option to partition the 8 gig unpartitioned space and install there.

But I don't understand what you are seeing at this blue screen. This 974 MB partition named "C partition1" is that ALL you see?

What brand of computer is this? And what sort of disk controller does it have? Is this a SATA or a RAID controller or a simple IDE controller? We may have a driver issue here.

Gary

 

this Lappy is a Compaq Presario C714NR
--disk controller, i really dont know... i think i could have used Everest but for some reason it doesnt work with vista or my comp...

-do i look in device manager?

-Thanks So SO Much For Helping me Resolve this

 

Opps it is right there in your signature!!! Serial ATA is SATA. And because of this you are going to need a SATA driver for XP. But that is just the start of the trouble. When you are installing XP, there is an option (F6 if I remember correctly) that you press to allow you to provide XP with a special disk driver. You need this for SATA and RAID drives. I am betting you do not have a floppy drive on this machine, right? And the XP installer is really stupid in that it will only look at a floppy drive to find the drivers after your press the function key!!!

If you don't have a floppy drive, there is hope. Are you at all familiar with "slipstreaming" service packs into a XP installer prior to installation? This is a method where by one could take an XP installer disk and a service pack like SP1 and mash them together so the SP1 was applied to the files the installer used to install the OS. This can be done with disk drivers too. I don't have the specifics at hand but if you go to top of the page here and use the search text box ( NOT the two search drop downs, those are GARBAGE!) type in "XP slipstream" without the quotes. There are discussions of slipstreaming SATA drivers into an XP install there.

I think this explains the weird results your were seeing at the blue screen. The native disk driver the XP installer was using to read the drive at that moment were unable to correctly interpret the results it was getting from the SATA drive.

We'll work through this yet!!!

Gary

 

Sorry, did u catch my reponses inside your quote? i clicked italics, thinking it would be easier to read but the quote is in italics...

SATA... i didnt even see it myself hah

arg, this seems so complex... i think im gonna have someone else do this for me... i dont wanna end up killing all my stuff. =(

 

No I didn't see it! Never reply inside the quote. No one will EVER notice it there.

Do you have a floppy drive on the laptop?

Gary

 

lolz
now i know hehe

-no, no floppy.. it was released this year...
by floppy you mean these right?-: http://www.homeofficebuddy.com/images/floppy.jpg

 

Hey there..

For XP (non-SP2) when you are installing, you will see on the selection screen the main C drive partition (where Vista lives) and a D drive (where the recovery lives).. in the middle of that you should see your "empty partition", or "unallocated space".. You can use the up/down arrows to go over the unallocated space and press C to create a partition.

However, I keep having to recover my Vista because the OLD XP doesn't have the proper SATA drivers (as noted above). I've tried a few times, and it ends up killing the MBR causing a full restore to be needed.

I'm going to try and figure out this slipstreaming thing and see if i can't get XP on mine (just like yours.. C714NR).

I was also trying to test drive Ubuntu on this laptop, but the X-server won't start.. I'm guessing the burn I have doesn't have the right video drivers in it. Gonna have to see if there is an updated Ubuntu out there for this lappy, too..

If I get this slipstreaming thing done, I'll post back here with what I had to do (though, if you do the search as suggested above, you'll be starting from the same place I am)