Question : How can I access the rest of my hard disk?

Hello
I've just intalled XP on a new SATA hard disk on my ACER Extensa 5220 laptop - 320 GB.
XP only recognises 130 GB - I'm told that it's because SP1 can't go above 130 GB - I should have installed with SP2
I believe I can make a new installation CD using streaming but that sounds a bit hard...
Any tools which could recognise and partition the rest of the HD without killing my XP installed ?
Any advice gratefully accepted
Keith

Answer : How can I access the rest of my hard disk?

To make a slipstreamed CD with all service packs for XP installed, download nLite.

http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

Use your current XP CD as the base, then download SP2 and SP3 as standalone executable files here:

Service Pack 2 Network Install - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=049c9dbe-3b8e-4f30-8245-9e368d3cdb5a&displaylang=en

Service Pack 3 Network Install - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5b33b5a8-5e76-401f-be08-1e1555d4f3d4&displaylang=en

nLite should be pretty self explanatory, but here's a quick rundown:

Open nLite, point it to where your original XP CD is. It should autodetect the correct files it needs. It will then need to put these files in a different folder so it can make changes. Pick whatever folder you like. (I usually make a folder called "XP nLite" on my desktop) It will extract the files from the CD to the folder. Then the next screen, you want to choose "Integrate Service Packs, Hotfixes, etc". Then point the program to where you downloaded the XP service packs too. Do SP2 and SP3 separately.

At the end you have the option to create an ISO file. Make sure you check the box to create ISO file, and hit the Make ISO button, it is easy to overlook. That's all there is too it, should take about 30 to 45 minutes if that.

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To see your full hard drive space, do the following:

Right click My Computer, select Manage. Then look for Disk Management, open that up. You should see your "Local Disk C:" Do you see any "Unallocated Space"?

If there is a large part of unallocated space, you should be able to use several different programs to resize your drive to the full amount.

I like to use GParted, but there is also one called PartedMagic that is similiar.

http://partedmagic.com/

or

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Both programs should work fine. You need to download and burn one of these as an ISO file.

Use ImgBurn to do so if you don't already have a image burning program.

http://www.imgburn.com/

Then boot from CD using Gparted or PartedMagic....just use default settings, hit Enter until you get to the graphical part. You want to resize your partition. You should be able to select your drive, and do resize. Then drag the bars all the way over so the full capacity is taken up.

Click Apply Changes, it should take a couple minutes to work. Then if successful, reboot the computer, remove the CD, and your Windows should see the full hard drive size.