Partition Magic need to convert from Primary to Logical

How do I convert either Extended or Unallocated space from Primary to Logical? On Dist 1 I am unable to convert Unallocated or Extended space from Primary to Logical but I MUST only have four Primary partitions before I can attempt to install a second XP SP2 operating system.

XP (C) is installed on Disk 1 and I think BOOTMAGIC is required to be on Disk 1. I really wanted to install this second XP on Disk 2 but Help tells me XP must boot from a primary partition on the first hard drive. MAYBE I should just throw away the slipstreamed XP CD which took me forever to accomplish and forget about a second installation. I attempted to attach a Print Screen of my Partition Magic window but was unsuccessful. Wish I had a clue what I am doing . . .

 

Hi June,

You are making it harder than necessary. Installing a second copy of XP need not be that difficult.

The rule about having no more than 4 primary partitions applies to each hard drive separately. You can have up to 4 Primary partitions on EACH hard drive.

As for Boot Magic, you don't need that since the second install of XP will detect the existing one and set the dual boot up for you. You'll be able to designate which one you want for the default even.

All you need is a place to install the second copy. If you want it on the second hard drive, point it to there when asked. If you have adequate room on an existing partition that already has data that you want to keep, be sure you decline any offer to format the drive selected. just stay alert and it should be intuitive all the way through the operation. If you have fears and doubts, read up on the procedure so you'll have some idea of what to expect.

Here's a good read for you.

Good luck.

 

June--Here is another installation guide with graphics for each step.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/xp_pro_install_-_graphic.htm
You were smart to get two hard drives. Dell fills one with four primary partitions, two of them being Dell utilities (Diagnostics and Restore System). So you would have to get rid of one to install another primary partition.
Tell us how it goes.
P.S. To answer your original question, though probably no longer pertinent, you could convert an existing Primary partition to Logical using Partition Magic by highlighting the partition and under Partition Operations chose either Convert or Create. Both offer the opportunity to change a Primary partition to a Logical.

 

I don't know what that's all about. I have XP installed on a logical partition (not the first one on the drive either) and it runs just fine. It's been this way for two years now. Maybe there's a difference if you format NTFS vs FAT32 (mines FAT32). Also, I've only got one drive so maybe that has something to do with it. I kind of doubt it though. Everything I've ever read about this has always said XP doesn't care what kind of partition it's on. Can anybody enlighten me on this???

 

Zander,

You can put WindowsXP on any partition you choose, but there will be 'boot' info at the beginning of the main hard drive. If you look in the DiskManagement section of 'ComputerManagement' (and Windows is not installed to the "normal" C: drive configuration) you *should* see a small partition at the beginning of your hard drive that holds boot information. HTH

B

 

Well, I probably should have stated that I have 98 installed on the c: drive. I realize that files necessary to boot have to be on that partition but that's all taken care of when you install XP without any intervention from the user. If that's what the help file is talking about in the sentence I quoted previously, it would appear to be a bit misleading. I read it as XP has to be on the first primary partition on the drive (which it doesn't) instead of you have to have a primary partition on the first drive to write XP's boot files too. Do you get what I mean here?

 

The help files are a little 'cryptic', and most of the information does not apply to a dual-boot situation. That's why a dual boot system doesn't want to boot properly if you reinstall the 'first' OS (unless you are using separate boot manager software) ... it overwrites the boot information. When I first started multi-booting my system it drove me crazy trying to sort out some of the gibberish that is found in the "Help" file. It makes a little more sense if you just apply it to a single OS on the "C:" drive.

B

 

The dual boot being proposed in this case doesn't involve a dos based system so the "First" installed system problem isn't a factor this time. Since we're only dealing with two copies of XP, it'll be pretty hard to mess up the bootloader files. Just get it on the partition you prefer and XP will handle the rest. None of the usual worries are relevant this time.

I don't go so far as to say it can't be botched but you really gotta try hard.

Case in point - I cloned my boot drive to a secondary hard drive. Unwanted and unexpected, XP created a dual boot for me. It didn't ask, it just did it. I was blown away. No editing the boot.ini - nothing done on my part. You gotta know it's a cake walk if it can happen that easy without trying.

My original dual boot XP - XP fluke.

 

Thanks for all of the prompt and very informative replies but I get confused easily...old age??? and I need a bit more help. My computer was purchased from a local Computer Zone so I don't have Dell stuff to mess up. The Computer Zone guy suggested in a diplomatic way that I should stop trying to do stuff I don't know much about and I'm about ready to agree with him. My slipstreamed CD may not work. After I burned the CD I booted with it and got A:\> instead of Setup.

I am a Contributing Member so I don't know why I can't attach the file containing the Partition Magic window.
When I attempted to Convert the Extended or Unallocated areas on Disk 1 I found Convert grayed out.
When I attempted to install XP on Disk 2 a window came up telling me "XP must boot from a primary partition on the first hard drive" so I decided to stop before I got in more trouble.

I use NTFS for both disks.

From the information posted it sounds like I should be able to simply install XP (if I can't get the slipstreamed CD to work I will just use my XP SP1 CD) on Disk 2 and then Boot Magic should allow me to boot whichever installation I wanted. I will probably remove the old one after I get the new one installed, updated and tweaked to my preferences BUT I need a security blanket until the new one works to my liking (my old installation works just fine). If I did this I wouldn't need a free primary partition for 'boot' info at the beginning of the main hard drive???

Or should I uninstall Boot Magic first, then install XP to Disk 2???

IF this simple procedure could possibly be botched you can bet I would be the one to accomplish it without even trying. I have been reading this forum for several years and I trust the judgment of the posters to this post so what do you suggest I do.

Disk 1 is 80 GB
Boot Magic 47.0 MB
XP 8 GB (hidden partition-this is where I could install the new OS)
XP C 8 GB
Extended 18 GB which contains Data D 4 GB, Programs E 4 GB and Other F 10 GB
Unallocated 42 GB

Disk 2 is 100 GB
Extended 24 GB which contains Page File H 2 GB, Unallocated 2 GB and Backup K 20 GB
Unallocated 71 GB

 

I can only repeat what I said. DO NOT use Boot Magic - uninstall it. XP has its own boot manager that kicks in automatically to set you up for dual booting when another system is detected. Unhide the partition that you intend to install the second copy on and you'll be all set to go.

Then you have two options, installing from Windows or installing by booting directly to the install CD. You may have to enter BIOS/CMOS setup to change the boot order for the latter method. Actually, you have another option, you can boot to a floppy made for the purpose and access the CD for the install.

In either/any case, just watch the screen and read carefully all the options presented. You will be asked whether you want to replace your existing copy or install to another partition. Direct it to the one you unhid. Allow it to format that if you havent already. It's all basic intuition so don't be afraid. You'll do fine. If not, you can always format the failure and try again. Just stay off the C: drive where your present OS is located and you can't do any real harm.

If all this is going to upset you too much, take the thing back to the person who built it for you and let them do the deed. It shouldn't cost much at all.

Go for it!

ps. Don't be concerned by the A: prompt you get when booting the CD. Just type the drive letter of your cd-rom drive followed by a colon and press enter. It will likely be C: since it will drop down one letter given the absence of the hard drive. It's not being recognized in this mode.

When you get to the proper drive, type cd i386 and press enter

Then type winnt.exe and press enter. That should start the install.

 

Just a couple thoughts here. Any imput from Surferdude2 on this is more than welcome.

From this it appears you want to have both XP's on the same disk. If this is the case, perhaps it's not the best idea to uninstall Boot Magic. If you uninstall it and install the second XP my guess is that your drive letters are all going to change because the hidden partition will no longer be hidden. If this happens your sure to have some problems with the old OS if your programs are installed on a different partition, which is appears they are from what you've posted. If this happens I suppose you could probably change the the drive letters in XP's computer management console but I'm not sure just how that would work. I haven't really tried it other than for cdrom drives. If you keep Boot Magic, you could simply hide the new OS from the old one and everything would appear normal to the old OS. Either way I think I'd unhide the partition before doing the install. I don't know how XP's installation routine handles hidden partitions. Perhaps the Dude knows.

I not trying to make this more confusing than it has to be. Ordinarily, this should be a breeze but given the fact that you currently have the partition hidden changes things just a bit (in my opinion). Also, the fact that you might eventually remove the old OS may come into play. It's still not a hard thing to do but it would appear to me from all the possiblities I can think of that one should put a bit of thought into how you want to do it so as avoid as many hassles as you can in the future.

What do ya think Dude? Am I being overly cautious here?

I think the reason it's greyed out is because there's nothing to convert. Unallocated space is just that. It's space that hasn't been partitioned or formatted. It's not a partition. Just empty space on the hard drive until you allocate it to something. As for the extended partition, it sounds like you don't have any logical partitions within it. An extended partition can't be used either until you created logical partitions within it. In both of these cases, there's nothing to convert yet. You have to first create the logical partition(s) within the extended partition and the unallocated space has to be either partitioned or used to increase the size of the partitions that lie next to it. For the unallocated space you're probably better off to use it to increase the size of the partitions you have now so as to avoid the problem of drive letters changing.

 

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June
I think what your problem might be is that you have to select the right template from the options in the control panel. Click on the UserCP link at the top left of this page. Then in the control panel on the left side click the options link. Scroll all the way to the bottom and where it says "forum skin" select subscribers. Click save changes then see if you can post a pic. If you don't have the need to in this thread you can use the tests section of the forum to do so. If you've been seeing advertisements on these pages doing this will remove them too. If anytime in the future you change any of the options the skin will get changed back to "use forum default" after you click the save changes button so you'll have to go right back into the options and change it back. Don't know if it's a bug or not but that's the way it works.

Edit:
Sorry Bill. I'm not trying to step on your toes here. We were both doing this at the same time and apparently you got in before me.

 

No sweat, Zander...

June.

I have just finished doing a dual boot on my machine. I had my first HDD partitioned into Primary C:\ with XPSP2 NTFS, Logical D:\ and Logical E:\.

I booted with my slipstreamed XPSP2 disk in the drive and installed another Windows install to E:\. When it was finally finished, XP asked me which OS I wanted to boot to. XP install did this automagically.

What I had in windows explorer was my orig C: and a new drive E:\ at the end of all my other drives. The E:\ drive did not match the C:\ drive in that there were no files in E:\, only folders.

I fooled around with it some more and decided to try to change the E:\ to a Primary drive. When I did that I could no longer boot into my new XP (E:\) because it said I had a bad Hal.dll in it. I put a fresh one E:\Windows\system32 and it did no good. About that time, I decided I really didn't need a dual boot and deleted the partition and reformatted to logical NTFS for Archived files.

BTW, I discovered that I could modify the boot.ini by changing "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" to anything I wanted and that is what would appear on the dual boot screen. Mine said Old XP and the other said New XP.

As far as PQBoot goes, I tried using that but ended up not using it at all as it was all too confusing as to where the PQBoot had to be installed, etc..

 

That's just one of the "possibilities" I mentioned earlier. I know that previously Boot Magic had to be installed on a partition that had an OS on it. I was kind of wondering what happens if you remove the old OS and everything on it. You could probably uninstall it before removing the old OS but then you'd have some repairing to do in order to boot to the new one again. It wouldn't be the end of the world but it may be confusing to someone who doesn't know what to expect. If it weren't for the fact that the partition that XP is supposed to get installed on is hidden, I'd say use XP's boot manager. But then, when it comes to the old OS, what about all those drive letter changes? The partition will no longer be hidden from the old OS. Unless there's a way to hide it using the boot.ini file or some such thing.

A possibility maybe exists to fix that problem. I know Partition Magic used to come with a tool called Magic Mover. It did a pretty fair job of straightening out the problems created by such a scenario but I don't know if it still comes with that or not. I just don't know enough about the newer versions of Partition Magic and Boot Magic to be able answer these questions for sure.

On the other hand, one can probably just change the drive letters from XP's computer management console to straighten it out but I don't' know for sure. I kind of didn't want to get into all the possibilities as it would serve no real purpose at this time other than to confuse June more than we already have so I'll quit for now. I'll wait for input from Dude or somebody else who knows about these types of things.

 

Bill., your second install should have booted just fine. If XP installed and recognized it, it will generally work. As for not having any files on the root, that would be normal, they're on the root of the system first installed.

XP is tolerant to the extent that you can even install a parallel copy of it on the same partition. Think of it, two copies of XP on the C:\ drive. Yep, you can use one copy to repair things on the other, assuming you know how and what. It's a recognized procedure that MS has even outlined but I prefer other outlines since they tend to be clearer.

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxphome/installxpcdparallell/index.htm

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxppro/installxpcdparallell/indexfullpage.htm

Ya gotta love a system that's this robust!

 

Oh yes, it did boot ok.

The dual boot worked just fine. It's just when I wanted to boot into one of them and have the other hidden or visa versa that it didn't work. At least in the sense that C:\ drive would be "Old XP" or "New XP" according to which of them I booted. That's when I decided that I really didn't need a dual boot.

 

Yeah, that's why I said, don't use Boot Magic since it's not necessary. I have no quarrel with using Boot magic and it will set you up just fine with a dual XP - XP but it just isn't necessary to make it that complex. Hiding one system from the other isn't my idea of full dual boot accessibility.

Like you, I quickly tired of it and went back to single mode. I kept forgetting which OS I did what to!

Thanks for posting your results.

 

WindowsBBS has been a great resource for me the last few years. Thanks to all for the excellent information. It may take me some time before I apprehend all of it. So many things I don't know about...no wonder I innocently mess up. My Partition Magic 7.0 came with a printed manual but Partition Magic 8.0 only has Help.

Dude
You are so encouraging and your posts are complete and the instructions you give are easy to understand and make everything sound so simple. Your plan sounds good to me but I haven't tried it yet. First I would uninstall Boot Magic and delete that partition, then delete the hidden partition I set up when I thought I would need to install XP to Disk 1. Then I would use Partition Magic and install the new operating system on a new partition on Disk 2. My boot order is CD first and I SHOULD be able to use my slipstreamed CD using your instructions. I did not know XP had it's own boot manager...hope it would detect the first XP install on the first hard drive! I'm a do it yourselfer and determined to figure this out if possible.

Zander
I installed Partition Magic 8.0 and Boot Magic 8.0 to my Programs E partition but I uninstalled BootMagic from this location when Help told me it had to be on the first partition of the first drive! Partition Magic 8.0 does have Resize/Move and Drive Mapper. I really don't want to have both XP's on Disk 1 but decided I had no choice after I tried to install it on Disk 2 and a window came up informing me that XP must boot from a primary partition on the first hard drive. I THOUGHT I needed Boot Magic or there would be no way to open the new XP installation and that is when I again installed Boot Magic which insisted on being called G and being a Primary partition at the beginning of Disk 1. This was also when I made the hidden partition where I planned to install the second XP. When I eventually remove the old installation from Disk 1 I thought I would keep that partition so it would not change my drive letters. My Extended areas are not empty as they contain logical drives which contain files BUT Convert is dimmed.

Zander and Bill
In UserCP I had selected Subscriber but it doesn't seem to stick. However, the advertisements are not present. When I attempt to attach a saved bmp file I get "The page can not be displayed" and it will not upload.

 

Thanks for the kind words June. Please review the links in post #16 as they will show you what will be presented on screen as you go through this operation. Although they are intended for parallel installing XP onto the same partition, you can easily see at what point you will need to change the instructions for your purpose. When it gets to the point of selecting the destination, just point to your other drive. Then ignore the part about renaming the folder, since that isn't relevant. You can use the default name since it's going on to another partition on a different drive.

Good luck.