Is a partition possible to do a clean install?

My friend and I installed winxp over winme. Did the service pack thing and everything is now in slomo. On my computer did a clean install then the service pack and everthing is running fine.

We therefore would like to do a clean install on the other computer.

But because we do not have access to a second hard drive or zip drive I was wondering if a partition is possible to save the necessary files and then format the other part of the C drive, do a clean install and then return the backed up files?

Logic says I can, but no dobt windows says I can't.

Can someone tell me if it can be done and if so, how.

Thankyou

 

use partition magic to split the C into 2 partitions.

make the new partition with a logical drive d (and bump the cd drive letters up)

the size of the new partition should be big enough to hold your backups. you can still make the new partition ntfs files system ,but you won't be able to access it until you install winxp, so if you don't want to take a chance you can make the new partition fat32.

Then you will have 2 partitions.

then you just use the winxp setup to wipe out the c partition and format with either fat32 or ntfs.

Once you have winxp installed you can reinstall partition magic and merge the 2 partitions back together or just leave them separate just in case you need to do it again.

http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/

of course there are a lot of ways to do it and many other programs you could use.


just keep in mind that if the files you want to back up are the winxp setup files, you will want to make the new partition used for the backups fat32 so you can access them from dos with a boot disk. You will also need winxp boot floppies if you don't have a bootable winxp cd.

but it can be done.

 

Instructions for a "Clean Install"
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

 

Thanks for the info guys.
But can it be done without using partition magic?
I know I can fdisk but then I will lose all data.
Winxp has a partition wizard but I have never used it and do not know if it will achieve the required result.
Any more info would be greatly appreciated.

 

try this http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html

it's full featured for 30 days.

never used it myself