[newbe]

A couple of months ago my HP laptop lost it's operating system. Everytime I switched it on it wouldn't load up as it couldn't find it's OS (which was Windows XP) which forced me to reinstall it. I didn't my dad did whilst I was at work to save me...

A couple of months ago my HP laptop lost it's operating system. Everytime I switched it on it wouldn't load up as it couldn't find it's OS (which was Windows XP) which forced me to reinstall it. I didn't my dad did whilst I was at work to save me the hassle as he was free. However my Laptop had a partitioned hard drive and he installed it on D: which was the smaller partition. Thus I changed the settings so that documents would automatically be saved on C: rather than D: and strove to remember to put programs on C which could be put on C: (some windows things only work on the drive with windows on it seems like though). However this didn't make it all that workable and within the last week I've had warnings that D: is becoming low on space and windows has started being buggy as it doesn't have enough room.

A quick search on microsoft's help pages suggested that the best way to get around this without losing any data would be to install xp on the other partition which I have subsequently done. However now if I boot up the version of XP from the C: Drive I can't access any of the programs or files I can if I boot it up from the D: which I don't want as the D: drive has the up to date virus library and all the service packs and stuff I'd rather not have to reinstall/back up and then load on seeing as it is actually on the hard disk now anyways.

Any suggestions as to what I can do to get everything available from the C: Drive boot? Ultimately I'd like to delete the partition as it's troublesome and no use what so ever.