I hope someone out there can help me with my situation.
Here Goes...
Due to a recent mishap with my computer, I had to reformat my hard drive and resinstall my OS and all my software from the ground up. Everything seemed to work out okay in the end, but in the process I somehow managed to unknowingly partition my hard drive. I now have a good size (34Gig) C: drive, and a tiny little (3Gig) E: drive. Here's the kicker--my little E: is drive is designated as my boot drive! I desperately want to get rid of this partition, because E: is nearly full (2% free disk space) and my formerly fast computer has slowed to a crawl. I realize I can't just delete the partition the quick and dirty way (because it's my boot drive), but there's got to be a way for me to fix this! If anyone has any ideas, I would be most grateful!

"boot drive" meaning that's where your Windows is installed? No, deleting that one is not a good idea You can use some partitioning utility like Partition Magic to resize your partitions so that C is small and E is big.

just reformat, and start over. You have no info to lose. Redisgnate the size of your partitions.

aye. put the XP (?) CD back in the drive and begin a fresh installation. clear up your partition/s when you format via the new install. can't think of any reason why this wont work /shrug

Thanks for all your feedback!
Rather than deleting the partition, would it be any easier to resize it? If I could make it larger, perhaps it wouldn't bother me so much. I prefer the idea of working out a solution rather than reformatting and starting over (after all, that was how I accidentally partitioned it in the first place).
Does anybody know an effective way to safely make my E: drive larger without losing any vital data? I've heard Partition Magic works well and is fairly easy to use...

Any comments or suggestions?

It is just my Philosophy ,but I would simply start over again. Partition majic,etc. are 'Drive Overlay 'programs, the base idea is that your O/S and all info on your HDD must interact with this software in all communication between the HDD and every other component in your computer.
You will come up with a conflict one day.
People swear by these programs, I just feel why add another layer to Windows (Buggy enuf on it's own) if you really don't have to.
Just take your time at the partitioning part of the install , you can do it, right this time.

If I were to reformat and reinstall everything again, how would I go about reformatting both the E: and C: drives to wipe them out? Is there a DOS command that would allow me to do both simultaneously? (i.e. >format C:, E? Or would I need to deal with each drive individually?
Also, would reformatting my hard drive automaticall delete the partition, or would I need to address that matter during the re-installation of the OS?

Thanks in advance to your feedback!

I take it you are loading XP from the Cd .If so when you tell windows to install it will show you the partitions you have and offer to install in one of them or delete the partitions .
Delete the partitions and the CD will allow you to re-make , resize and then format the new partitions before it installs.
Just pay attention to the numbers you type in to set the size of the new partitions .
If you make a mistake , just delete and reset them again.
You will see.

That's just plain wrong. All that Partition Magic and other partitioning utilities do, is move data around on the hard drive and alter metadata . Yes, PM (and others) install device drivers to be able to access the hard drive directly under Windows, but there is no overlay or any other kind of permanent "interfacing" software whatsoever.

have you tried to move some data out of the filled dirve
and exactly what is the whole size of drive and what are the partition sizes
the slowing up of machine may be the pagefile is get fragged
you may just need a good tune up
One of my machines is packed with only 2 -3 gb of space on each drive left, and it is still as fast as the day installed
so a good OS setup looks like this
total drive 36gb
partitions
1st 10gb has OS on it and is the boot,and page file
2nd partition is the rest of drive
make sure the page file is only on the first P and not both
make sure you only have 1 instance of the recycle bin
a good partition manager will fix system on boot up not while machine is running under OS
just don't let chkdsk run it will screw everthing up
even a standard format will not remove files from drive
only a 0 wipe will do that
look for filescavenger it will get all your data back
the best recovery and disk utilitys don't work only under the OS they have there own ntfs and dos boot environment

Nodsu ; I may have used the wrong terms , But Drivers are technically Software and by your own admission they(PartitionMajic Drivers) interact between the HDD and the O/S. That is exactly what I am saying.
I have had conflicts with these Drivers on, more than one occasion, The last time I used it was when it caused crashes because of a conflict with Norton.
The idea I am claiming is that , I prefer to minimize the amount of software I install on a windows machine simply because if it is unnecessay why take the chance .
With Windows I don't think it is worth it.

"all communication"?

And you can uninstall all these drivers once you are finished with your partitioning no problem.