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steveo46
07-19-04, 04:30 PM
I went through the "99 Performance Tips" this weekend, good stuff, made a difference. One odd thing, I checked to see if my hard drive was NTFS, it was, mostly. The top entry had no drive letter, the other, of course, was C:, I have one 18Gb hard drive, a zip drive and a CD. This oddity was FAT32, healthy, some 870mb, 80% or so free. What is this thing?

My Dell is 2 yr.'s old, if I need to post more details, let me know.

Thanks for your input,

SteveO
therealwesty
07-19-04, 05:21 PM
Welcome to PCStat Forums SteveO!

Sound almost like there is another partition on your harddrive. If the drive has no drive letter than it is not being used by your current Windows setup. You should be able to 'Mark the partition as active...' or 'Change Drive Letter and Paths' using the Disk Managment tool of WindowsXP/2k.
steveo46
07-19-04, 06:09 PM
That's what I was thinking, but I certainly haven't added a partition. It's pretty much the same as it came from Dell, WinXP Home Ed. Wonder if there's a way to "see" what's on that piece? I found this looking with the Disk Management tool.

SteveO
Ace
07-19-04, 09:48 PM
Sometimes companies like Dell add another partition in for system restores or sometimes weird manufacturer program stuff (I never understood that). If it's the latter it will normally be quite small (the sort of size you descibe) so that may be it. I know my father's PC (a Medion) has this, but I never bothered to look into it. Maybe I'll take a closer look tomorrow.
PCgeek
07-19-04, 11:13 PM
My old compaq had a 500MB partition for some compaq files and shiz
steveo46
07-20-04, 02:16 PM
Thank you all for your help and input. I found an obscure reference on the Dell forums site by a moderator and I think Dell put the partition(or whatever it is) there when they built it. I'm just glad it's booting much faster after I implemented the tips.

Thanks Again,

SteveO
Doc Timbo
07-20-04, 10:20 PM
i think we shpuld all go to Dell and Compaq head office during some national holiday... and brick up the last row of offices on one side of a floor, plaster it...add noticeboards etc........ that would be a great Monday morning moment :rolleyes:
PCgeek
07-21-04, 10:59 AM
LMAO Timbo!!! So much creativity.. lets do it hehehe