My SONY computer, XP Home installed, recently needed a new HD due to the main 15 gig partition on the original 120gig HD was getting full and causing problems. I installed a 200 gig HD and restored the default factory load to the new drive, then installed all of my software back again.

The problem is: When the restoration was finished, instead of using all 200 gigs of the new drive as a single partition, the Sony restoration package made the boot partition15 gigs again. I cannot find a way around Sony's software to make this partition larger. I don't think it's possible to increase a partition without formatting the disc, is it? Right now, with a barebones load of software that I use, I have 500 MB of disc space on the C_Drive. That's just not going to hack it.

I do have a new copy of XP Home and could start from scratch, however I'm a little wary that drivers and such may be missing... Sony is so proprietary about things, I'm afraid I may lose key features of the computer. Any suggestions?

How about this... Clone the contents of the 15 gig C_Drive partition onto a new HD and ideally, into a 50 gig partition to become the c_Drive on that HD.

Is that possible? Or is there another way?

yes, there are several ways. CLONE the drive with proportioning.

or use a program like partition magic.

Have you visited the Sony computer support site? Their FAQ section should help identify how to escape the standard setup so that you can re-size the c-drive.

It could be as simple as typing into a dialog box a new size not exceeding the size of the drive.

BTW, I just poked the Sony computer site........... for an arbitrary desktop(pcvj200). Based on a sample of one...... ouch! It was not helpful. It may be necessary to use computer management(xp) or third party partition software to add to slack space to the current partition (c-drive).

It appears that 'diskpart' entered into the command window can be used to extend the c-drive into the contiguous spare space. Consult the 'help' under computer management.