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JSchramm · Member Joined: 06 Jun 2007 Posts: 2

Hi all. Here's my scenario.

I have a 300GB hard drive, currently with Windows XP Media Edition installed on the main partition. I have a utility partition, sized at 10~GB, which comes standard on HP computers.

What I want to do is buy Windows Vista Home Basic and have two operating systems on my computer (XP would be the main one, but I want Vista available to me so I can get used to how it works [I work in tech support at my university]).

If my utility partition were bigger (at least 40GB) I would simply reformat that partition and install Vista, and have the space which is now in limbo automatically be reallocated for use by Vista.

However, like I said, I only have 10GB of hard drive space on my D: drive (utility partition).

Therefore, I think what I have to do is reformat my entire hard drive and repartition the existing space. I would probably give the C: drive (with XP) 200GB, D: (with Vista) 50GB, and give E: (backup of XP) the remainder.

The problem is that I've never reformatted and then repartitioned (in other words, reallocating space and changing the partition size). If someone could please walk me through how to do this, I would appreciate it greatly. Please include any commands I would need to type (if going from DOS).

Also, please bear in mind that I am still new to all this stuff, so I am [clearly] not as experienced as some of you.

Thanks in advance smile