Dell Inspiron 1505 - just purchased, need reformatting help!

[Azurik]

I just bought one of these and want to remove Windows XP Home and upgrade it to Windows XP Pro with the CD I have. I'm currently in the installation screen and Dell has a ton of partitions!

-: Partition1 [FAT] = .05GB
c: Partition2 [NTFS] = 50GB
d: Partition3 (Backup) [NTFS] = 17GB
f: Partition 4 [FAT32] = 3GB

I've never encountered so many partitions and don't want to screw up the computer. Besides the C: Partitiion, what other ones should I delete? Is D: the back-up and driver data? Should I be aware of anything here?

Big thanks guy, I wanna get crackin' on this thing!

 

[Ernie99]

Partition1 is the dell diagnostics. Two is of course, your main partition, Three, I believe, is a norton ghost (or some other program) backup partition of your C:, and four is the on-disk image of XP home

 

[Azurik]

Originally posted by: Ernie99
Partition1 is the dell diagnostics. Two is of course, your main partition, Three, I believe, is a norton ghost (or some other program) backup partition of your C:, and four is the on-disk image of XP home

Ah, in that case, I will just reformat the main partition and leave the others alone. Thanks for the help, mate. Appreciate it!

 

[Azurik]

Guys, a lot of my devices aren't working for this laptop. How do I get the computer to search for necessary drivers on the internet?

 

[pcgeek11]

Originally posted by: Azurik
Guys, a lot of my devices aren't working for this laptop. How do I get the computer to search for necessary drivers on the internet?

Install the drivers from the drivers disk that came with the PC. You should have gotten a driver disk... XP Home and Pro drivers are the same.

pcgeek

 

[TG2]

Since your changing the OS, why didnt you delete all the partitions? I mean your backups and stuff on the other drives is all for XP Home now..its of no use right?

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: TG2
Since your changing the OS, why didnt you delete all the partitions? I mean your backups and stuff on the other drives is all for XP Home now..its of no use right?

Don't do that. He may want to sell it later, in which case, a restore from the dell partition is best. OP, run the Ghost trial before you format. It'll let you delete the D: drive and merge it back into the C: drive.