Partitioned Hard Disk

I have a partitioned hard disk. I'm running Windows XP Pro. One partition is a FAT32, the other is NTFS. When I try to format the FAT32 to NTFS it says "Windows cannot complete formatting". I've never had this problem on other machines, it says this when trying to format a floppy as well. Any ideas?

Thanks

Which partition is it that you are trying to format?

The Fat32, I'm trying to format it into NTFS.

Sorry, I mean which partition is the FAT32, is it the primary or the secondary partition?

it's the secondary. It's all a little unusual, the partition that the system boots of off is the D drive and the other is the C drive.

Can I clear this up? Is D: the FAT32 partition or is C:? If C: is the FAT32 partition you won't be able to format it as XP puts boot files in that location. What you can do is convert it to NTFS though. You might want to try that anyway.

C is the FAT32 partition. D is the NTFS partition. I want to combine them together. C(FAT32) is the primary and D(NTFS) is the logical. I tried converting C to NTFS but it gave me the Windows is unable to complete the format error. I have Partition Magic, but I screwed it up and it wouldn't boot from the hard drive, I had to reinstall Windows. I would love to be able to format the damn thing and combine these partitions.

Thanks

Ok, it sounds like you have some minor corruption in your XP install. But anyway, to combine your drives you are going to have to repartition your drive and reinstall because XP (and all NT based OS's) put boot information on the very first partition of your hard drive. While it boots off of D: it actually runs from info on C:. To combine your partition into one you will need to reinstall becasue of the way XP works. If you can back your data up and then completely wipe the drive, that is your best option. I'd suggest that a reinstall is your best option unfortunately.

I had a feeling thats what I'd have to do. Thanks for the info, I at least know what I have to do.

You can change boot.ini to make it so once its formatted the first drive it will recognize the second is now the first and boot of that.

So reinstalling is not necassary although id haver to say why did you not just joint he two drives when u had to reinstall lol

.matt