Pete

The drive formatting takes place on the initial install of XP, usually if you want to reclaim all the space you would delete any partitions until you have none, and then install to the unformatted partition which will then give you the option to re-format

 

I now have a Drive C with 25.3Gb and a Drive D with 30.4Gb

That Partition Logic Program was freeware and about 450Mb, why can Windows not have such a Utility built into it? The Windows disk manager cannot resize without losing everything - yet a free program will do that quite well.

Cheers again Steve

 

I think its something to do with Microsoft having a deal with partition manager software companies

You can now do it in Vista, its like you cant schedule a defragmentation of the drive without 3rd party utilities I believe this is to do with licensing etc

Although again now in Vista you can

IIRC Microsoft had agreements with some software manufacturers that they wouldnt use all of their technology (like the old Windows Backup too) so they wouldnt end up putting them out of business

 

The laptop is now trying to download the windows updates since the SP2 release .... there are quite a few.

I say yes, download, and off it goes .... then it asks me to install and I say 'yes' - it then says that it cannot install the updates .. what's up? Any ideas?

 

It should give an error code 0x80004005 etc

Or a link to show the error code as to why they didnt install, quite possibly just one of the updates that wont install

 

standard fix for the one is to install Microsoft update (as opposed to Windows update). It does not matter which one you use, just alternate between the two if it gives you bother. The act of alternating seems to make it rescan and fix whatever it was complaining about.

You can get unlucky and have to do something, but my top tip above has fixed those issues on over 50 machines so far, only two needed extra intervention.

 

85 downloads won't install

Error code - 0x80070017

Any advice?

I think it could all be due to the HD being on its way out, maybe?

 

Looks like it is trying to install Service Pack 2

Possibly hard drive playing up again Pete, you could try a scandisk / chkdsk with surface scan for errors again, or now you have proven the laptop works, buy a new hard drive for it

 

hiya Sonic, thanks for your reply

When I had issues over the size of the Drive C on the HD - if you remember - I installed XP again on drive D as drive C was only 2Gb. ....... well, when I used that partition tool to make C much bigger and D ended up about 28Gb. Well, I formatted drive D to get rid of the 2nd XP off it.

But, on boot it asks which OS to use ..... as far as I know I only have 1 OS on drive C now - looking at drive D shows it as empty ...

How do I get it to stop asking me which OS to use?

How do I tell it I have SP2? Or it will keep downloading all the time and trying to instal and then failing wasting time and energy? I have a SP2 CD, maybe I should load that and see if it corrects the fault as it may register SP2 as being installed?

 

Hi Pete

Ok you will need to edit a file called boot.ini in the root of the C:\ drive

If you right click on My Computer, and select properties, and I think it is under advanced the start up options

You could try just installing Service Pack 2 if you have the CD, that might stop any issues with the downloaded one

 

Thanks Sonic - you are good! Just amended that file, took out one of the OS (was worried I had picked the wrong one, but seems OK)

Now, where's that old SP2 disc?

 

POOOO!!

Loaded SP2 from a Microsoft SP2 CD, it installed ok.

BUT, the laptop is still saying that they cannot install (all 86 of them!) due to error code 0x80070017

So, I have to leave auto updates off and then it shouts at me

 

Also, my e-mail is et up but it doesn't get the e-mails my desktop gets!?

I can send a test and it comes back - so, I am sending and receiving.

Thinking I had set it up wrong I got the BT Yahoo automatic program to run through it ..... still doesn't work. Am I missing something? I should be able to send an e-mail from either desktop or laptop and have it 'ping' on both shouldn't I?