upgrade NT to XP (not enough space)

[emzabala]

I want to upgrade a few NT pcs to XP.

Only problem is that NT partitions are too small and won't have enough space to run the XP upgrade.

This is what I was planning to do.

1. Run Partition Magic to make the NT partition bigger.
2. Run the XP upgrade.

Will this work?
What does everyone think about Partition Magic working with NT? Is it smooth?
Has anyone ever upgraded a partition that was made larger by Partition Magic? How did it go?

 

[meastaugh1]

Haven't tried this, I do know that upgrading from 9x to XP is a bad idea, as the OS is generally less stable than a fresh install of XP. Not sure if the same applies, if upgrading from NT.

 

[Peping]

HI,

I would start by upgrading hardware bios and drivers first in preparation for XP. Would suggest a clean install.

Peping

 

[malaycobra]

I increased my NT4 sp6 c: partition from 2 to 4 gig with PM and then upgraded to XP pro. No major problems so far (6 months +)
Make the partition as big as you can, XP needs a lot of room, because despite good disk management and frequent cleaning, I am down to my last 700 meg on C.

By the way, make sure you make rescue disks with PM, I nearly lost everything on my boss's computer trying to resize his C drive!

Good luck!

 

[OzCDN]

One point to watch out for when you resize your NT4 partition. NT4 cannot boot off of a partition larger than 8 GB. It can see partitions bigger than 8 GB ... but cannot boot off of them.

I do not know if this will be an issue but keep it in mind when you resize the partitions.

 

[wolluf]

OzCDN,

NT4 SP6a certainly can boot off partitions > 8GB (I've had it booting from a 30GB partition).

 

[zoeythecat]

Wolluf,

I think OzCDN is probably talking about making the size larger than 8GB while utilizing PM. I think (I have heard) there are some issues resizing a partition larger than 8GB with PM installed. Maybe i'm wrong but that is what I heard. I have PM and because of that I did not resize my partitions larger than 8GB

Zoey

 

[emzabala]

Thanks for all the replies.

Does it matter whether or not I apply service packs before I run Partition Magic?

 

[zoeythecat]

For NT you need to be at SP6 for you to install Partition Magic (A message will come up telling you this if you don't have SP6). Also, note after installing PM, your partition will need to be NTFS if you want to go above 2GIG. If you are converting from FAT, make sure you do not convert to FAT32 (Convert to NTFS) otherwise your system will not boot up. This is because NT does not read the FAT32 file system.

Good luck.