I have very old and slow PC, originally running Windows '95 to give you an idea!

It is not mine but loaned to me by a friend who does not want it back, and has his legal copy of XP on it, with my legal 2000 Edition of Office.

The trouble is the miniscule Hard Drive has three partitions on it:

C -> 3.9 Gig
D -> 2,0 Gig
E -> 1.9 Gig.

The partition has only 235 Meg of free space, and there is almost nothing in "My Documents" so no possible saving of space there. The whole partition appears occupied by Microsoft operating software and operating systems! Every so often another "Upgrade" wants to automatically load itself onto the PC while it turns off, and there is nowhere left for it to go.

Is it possible to change the partition sizes - I would like almost all of "E" to be given to "C" - without having to completely reformat, which is hard as I do not have my friend's XP disc here?

What sensible and free software might be downloaded to do this? I don't want to spend a fortune on this [ie. I don't want to spend anything on it!] And the issue is simply to keep the old thing running as long as possible, because I can't really afford to replace the PC at all!

Thanks for any sensible opinions on what to do.

ATB from George

What are you using it for George? I'd be tempted to just wipe and format and start off with a clean OS.

Only the Forum, email, and Skype really. And a bit of WAV and Paint editing, but the workspace is in Partition "D" so that needs to stay the current size.

The trouble is that I don't have my friend's original XP disc, and he cannot find it! So I have to keep the current set up. In the Autumn I plan to get a cheap new laptop, and that will have enough HD space for me far too much probably. Assuming I have enough tp buy it, that is.

Thanks from George

Have had a quick look and can't find any freeware that offers what you seem to need. I know it is possible in Vista with the standard utility, but I never tried doing it in XP, and am not even sure there is a utility that can do it. A second drive and some software that allowed you to copy partitions might allow you to do it though. Maybe see if you have another friend with an unwanted computer you can borrow a hard drive from, or have a look on Flea Bay, you'd only need a drive as big as the partitions you want to salvage, and now you can get sub £100 TB hard drives I can't imagine 2nd hand 10-20GB ones go for much.

I do have a nice external HD, but not yet the necessary USB cable. I think it is 40 or 100 Gig, so I will get a USB flex this weekend, and see if I can do something useful with it!

Thanks from G

Drive Image XML probably can do it. The cheapest, easiest way to do is to install a 2nd internal HDD.

Have you considered a new computer? perhaps an off-lease one.

Old Naim equipment still does a good job reliably. Old computers are different....

Regards.

Phil

Dear Phil,

I do not think the mother board would carry another [or even different] HD, as it is so old by now.

I shall save for a laptop and pray that the old thing runs till then!

George

George

You could remove the external HD from its case and fit it into the PC. Assuming it’s a PATA drive, not a more modern SATA drive.

Then use software similar to Maxtor maxblast to transfer the entire contents of the old drive to the new drive. It will also transfer the operating system.

http://www.seagate.com/support/maxblast/mb_ug.en.pdf


It works on older PC’s. I used it to transfer the data from a 2Gb to 20Gb on a Pentium 200 machine. From memory, the old drive becomes useless until it is reformatted.

Once reformatted you could you could transfer the operating system back onto the old drive.

George,

Paragon's partition Manager 8.5 will merge your partitions and allow other manipulations.

It was given away on the PCPro magazine DVD of Oct 2007. It is a 23.6MB single extractable file.

If you can accept a file of this size and your profile e-mail is correct, let me know and I'll blast it your way.

Be quick though - I'm off to Canada next week.

Fraser

Copy the contents of the whole thing onto a 8GB flash drive, dust it and put a Linux distribution on it with OpenOffice or StarOffice. Cheap as chips and more computationally efficient.

I wouldn't let a Win95 PC near my network. Ever. And with WinXP, it's probably running as slow as a dog.

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:
put a Linux distribution on it with OpenOffice or StarOffice.

I’m surprised the phrase “Get a Mac” hasn’t reared its ugly head.

quote:

Originally posted by fatcat:

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:
put a Linux distribution on it with OpenOffice or StarOffice.

I’m surprised the phrase “Get a Mac” hasn’t reared its ugly head.

If it rains on your pc Get a Mac
Otherwise you only need a dark brown overcoat.

George,

I seem to remember that you can't download service pack 2 for xp from windows update, which might mean that even if you did get hold of your friends disk you might run into difficulties. It depends how old the disk is.

Just something you should maybe check before you re-install it, if the disk ever turns up.

Or you could just get a mac.

Dear Frazer,

Thanks for the idea. My email address is correct in the profile, so please will you send me an email and then I can reply.

Thanks to everyone for all the help.

Many thanks George

quote:

Originally posted by David Scott?:
George,

I seem to remember that you can't download service pack 2 for xp from windows update, which might mean that even if you did get hold of your friends disk you might run into difficulties. It depends how old the disk is.

Just something you should maybe check before you re-install it, if the disk ever turns up.

Or you could just get a mac.

But then Apple charges for service packs....

Iused to be a real apple partisan. I got an iMac in 97 or whenever they came out - and in those days Mac users had to put up with an unbelievable amount of bullshit and disinformation from PC mags and salespeople who were smugly convinced of the superiority of pcs and would mysteriously assert that imacs were only for surfing, Macs were only good for photoshop etc. Mac users would make similarly ridiculous claims about it being impossible to do creative work on a PC etc.

My imac froze far too often for a few months and then became more stable as various updates were released. After less than a year it was utterly reliable, though of course it came to seem slow compared to other computers. By the time I stopped using it, my son had got a PC and I had begun to realise that a lot of what Mac users said about windows wasn't true. You can get any computer to do just about anything any other one of similar specs can do, so that's all that matters, yes?

Not for me. It would be hard to explain why, but I'm completely sick of windows - XP and Vista - in a way I never got sick of MacOs. If my imac had a bigger screen and a driver for my printer I would still use it. Macs do just the same things as PCs but seem to do them more pleasantly and on the whole more reliably (with exceptions of course). Naim forum-ites should understand that someone might choose to pay for such a thing if they had the money. And if I had the money, I would. I wouldn't proselytise any more though and I wasn't seriously suggesting it to George. Doesn't sound like something he would want to spend money on. Each to his own.

Dear Dave,

I would love to have the spare money for a Mac. My sister in law had one with my brother [left behind on separation], and it was beautiful machine to use. But given that I would rather buy more recorded music, I accept that my friend's ancient [and it is rather slow, but faster enough for me to type - all that matters really] PC is sufficient for my need. It would drive many people up the wall, as it certainly struggles speed-wise, with the demands of XP as David Dever correctly notes, but it is stable. In two years it has only frozen once ...

I hope to fix the partitions differently this weekend, and then the continuous XP patches can still be accommodated, and I may be able to work at editing WAV files again. Sadly I have no chance with the HD space available now in “C” and the workspace used to be fine in “D” but refuses to function like that at the moment! My friend fixed this sometime ago, and something has gone left-field with it currently!

I don’t like to fiddle in case I wreck it, and continued function is the most important thing just now!

This editing of WAV files is a little bit of madness I enjoy, straightening out the catastrophic editing on some commercial recordings, especially un-rhythmic side breaks in 78 record transfers! If I can fix the issue I am happy to!

ATB from George

I am a Mac partisan, to a certain degree, but appreciate that there are Linux distributions that, for most people, would allow them to soldier on with their existing hardware while keeping secure, at a very reasonable or non-existent price.

I used to build PC desktop workstations in a previous life, and most of the architectural problems remain, fifteen years later. I avoid repair of people's desktop PCs like the plague, given the likelihood that both user and vendor are responsible for most of the functional problems, and not the hardware itself.

Methinks the days of the Windows desktop as the dominant UI for web browsing and e-mail access are numbered–I think the rise of capable appliances (web tablets, cell phones, entertainment appliances) has lowered the threshold for the pain of managing their devices with buggy desktop OSes.

(as I type this on a Nokia N800 Linux web tablet, in a comfortable chair)

Could have a look at GNU Parted - its free.

I have it burnt on a CD but have not used it yet, but it is supposed to do all the partitioning type of thing.

quote:

But then Apple charges for service packs....

Jim

I download and install them for free using the Software update - they are not called service packs, but software updates. I have moved frpm 10.4.0 to 10.4.11 (11 service packs) and there is no charge.

Apple does charge for major release upgrades in the same way Microsoft does. Well Mr Jobs has to eat

It costs less to keep the Amiga partition current. The TripOs kernel is much better than Unix IMHO, which in turn is better than Windoze. In this age of appliances I wonder why we need old fashioned OSs though ... and just to show computing has gone full circle now all the talk is of virtualisation.

ATB Rotf