Im really upset, i dont know what to do. I was trying to re install windows on my comp but when it came to delete the previous OS on the hdd, i just deleted the entire partition, which was the whole drive, however, when i finally installed the OS it said that it was going to install on a partition space of 131069mb, thats only 130 gb, my drive is 250gb hdd. What happened to the other 120gb? Cant i use FDISK to total wipe the hdd and start again? How do i do this?
Try updating to service pack 1 or service pack 2. An un-service packed WindowsXP install will usually limit drives at about 130gb.
Exactly, the origional XP versions were obvioulsy made well before you're components so at the time pretty much nobody had that many gigs of hard drive space, and if you had over 2 gigs of ram I think it was (maybe 3), it wouldn't recongnize any additional quanitities. It's worth the upgrade unless you want to wait for Vista to arrive, one of these days. Forturnatly MS will send you a Service pack 2 CD for free off their site, comes in a couple weeks.
You could download Service Pack 2 and look up how to create a slipstreamed custom XP install disc, which would have the entire drive recognized at 250GB right off the bat. However, even if it did, partitioning has it's advantages. The biggest being that you can have a separate partition for the OS, and several others for games, apps, music...whatever. Yes, you'd have to reinstall your apps, but your saved games data would be there, your music would be there...this makes reinstalls much less of a pain in the ass when you have to do them. Just my 2 cents.
