Deleting a Partition(Windows)

[Medalist]

i have this old old laptop with windows xp & it's really low on spacee around 350mb out of 55gb , would this be a result of installing windows more than once? If i were to delete partition C:\ would i be able to make a new one with 55gb , or would it be troublesome to do a thing?

Edited:

also, in disk cleanup there's about 1.5gb that can be regained if i compress old files, however trying to do this process, disk cleanup just skips it and deletes the other things, not clearing up that alloted 1.3gb of space

[WanderingKnight]

Uh, I don't understand what you want to say. I mean, if you delete partition C:, it would be the same as formatting the system. You can't format the system from the inside, you need to access the partition from another system (either another Windows installed on the same drive in another partition or the very Windows CD).

[Medalist]

Would you know of a reason why disk cleanup would skip compressing old files...?

[WanderingKnight]

Would you know of a reason why disk cleanup would skip compressing old files...?

Whatever you tried to say there, it's got me completely confused over the use of terms that, for me, have absolutely no relationship at all between them, or with the main topic.

Are you talking about the Disk Cleanup feature of Windows XP? I can't help you with the tool itself, but (unless someone corrects me on this) I can tell you that it's probably shit (judging on the quality of Windows XP's bundled software), so avoid it. If you want to clean up your disk, delete files (not system files!), or backup onto another device (either hard drive or CD/DVD).

[grey_moon]

Shudder at the thought of compressing to save space....

But back to the main topic, do you have your drive split into more then one partition? Do you know how to check? It is pretty easy to resize partitions in XP using a third party utility like gparted, but make sure you back up your data first.

also I personally would check to see if the system restore has run away with your disk space.... To do this with out changing file rights you need to do select all the files and directories of C and do a right click properties. Make sure if you do show hidden files you do not select "System Volume Information". Now if the size displayed is much much less then the size displayed by right clicking on c drive, then system restore has gone yogi bear and decided to eat you drive. you can fix this by disabling system restore and re-enabling it, but you will loose the ability to go back as the restore points will be lost.

[Medalist]

Surprisingly that worked thanks

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by Uchikatsu

Surprisingly that worked thanks

NPS glad I it wasn't too complicated to sort out. Thank you for the cookie (ps what does it mean if the little dot is grey?)