[mowerman]

bingo! held down esc while in restart mode, then the option came up to hit F1 for bios

[mowerman]

ok, now i have the Partition Magic and am at the screen which shows all the partitiosn on the hd. When I click on the empty unallocated partition, I only get the option to create a new partition, but nothing to remove or resize it.
What do I do now?

[ozar]

You'll need to click on an existing partition to resize it. If you wish, you can expand the Windows partition to take all the space on the drive, or you can create new partitions on the drive if you need them for storage or some other purpose. You could also simply leave unallocated space on the drive should you wish to install something else on it at some point.

Did the WinXP bootloader restore properly using SuperGRUB?

[mowerman]

been thinking round things. i currently have 2 windows partitions one of ntfs file system with a size of 21.14Gib and on the end of that the file system shows 'extended' one of 14.27Gib. Can I just resize the extended one to cover the size of the two unallocated empty ones from xandros? Sorry about asll the questions but I canm't find any instructions on the PM for a total novice at this sort of thing!

[mowerman]

Originally Posted by ozar

You'll need to click on an existing partition to resize it. If you wish, you can expand the Windows partition to take all the space on the drive, or you can create new partitions on the drive if you need them for storage or some other purpose. You could also simply leave unallocated space on the drive should you wish to install something else on it at some point.

Did the WinXP bootloader restore properly using SuperGRUB?

yes it worked!

[mowerman]

You'll need to click on an existing partition to resize it. If you wish, you can expand the Windows partition to take all the space on the drive

That is our preference as he needs the space so -
I clicked on the expanded drive and increased it until the partition size following it was added to it, now its showing as 16.12 (1.85 Gib bigger) but there is still an unallocated partition also of 16.12Gib which I can't do anything about. When I click on either of the Windows files it to expand them over this last partition it shows up as having no free space preceding or following it.

[ozar]

Yes, any unallocated space has to be adjacent to the partition that you want to expand in order to utilize it. Sometimes, it takes a bit work and extra thought processing to get things moved around and expanded just the way you want them. You should be able to find good documentation on the CD itself and on the PartedMagic website.

Glad you got the bootloader fixed. Sounds like you are almost where you want to be.

Post back with any other questions.