Dear Dean,
Yes, I enjoyed the visit too. I’ll let you know the next time I come to Dayton, and we can do it again. Perhaps we can start a tradition.
Here are some major points about re partitioning your hard drive.
- To repartition your hard drive, you need to boot up in DOS, and run the FDISK command. I boot from a Windows 98 startup disk. FDISK is a program for managing partitions on the hard drives in your computer – unless of course you’re running Partition Magic, or some other third party program like that.
- At any rate, FDISK displays a menu upon startup that gives you an opportunity to delete all partitions on a drive. You’ll need to know the drive number (0, 1, 2, … Etc.) that the system has assigned the drive that you want to re partition. You can learn this information by choosing the display drive information option in the FDISK main menu, then looking at the drive model numbers it displays for each of your drives. These codes usually incorporate a few letters of the manufacturer’s name or its initials, and the size of the drive.
- Once you know the drive number FDISK has assigned to the drive you want to repartition, you need to first delete all partitions from that drive. Follow the menu items to do this. They’re pretty clear. After this is done, when you display the drive information, it will tell you that the drive has no partitions. Note however that if your drive has any logical DOS partitions on it, you’ll need to delete those first before you remove the primary partitions.
- Next you want to create the new, single partition on that drive. When asked, say that you want to use all free space on this drive for the new partition.
- After the new partition is created, you’ll need to reboot your machine.
- After the reboot (again into DOS), run FDISK again and verify that the new partition has been created by using the display drive information option again. This screen should tell you the drive letter assigned to the new partition. Note this, because you’ll need to know this in order to format the new partition in the next step. Exit FDISK and get back to the DOS command prompt.
- You’ll need to format the new partition on the new drive. To do this, run the FORMAT command, which should also be on the bootable DOS disk. Follow its instructions. Depending on the size of the partition being formatted, the format operation can take the better part of an hour. So be prepared.
- Once the format is complete, you’ll need to install an operating system on that partition if it is your C drive. But I think you already know how to do that.
Good luck.
You have to make sure when you delete the partitions, that you remove ALL partitions from the drive, so that FDISK reports that the drive has no partitions. Then, when you make the new single partition, you must tell FDISK to utilize ALL the available space on the drive. Try that and see what happens.
I’m heading back to Altoona today. Can’t wait to get back into my own bedroom.
Well, I have to finish packing and buy an extra suitcase at the mall. I bought lots of books and software while here, and all of it will not fit in the suitcase I brought with me. 
So take care, and I’ll talk to you later.
Tom Hesley