Background: Windows 98 (stop laughing) - computer crashed last year - when I reinstalled XP-SP2 (hard drive was wiped clean), I was told to partition my hard drive (50/50). Now I'm very low on space...was told I could just slide programs & files over to the empty partition to free up space. Tells me I can't because the program/file is being accessed or used by other users. We are not networked, but everyone in family has their own windows login.

Responses were to (1) purchase disk management software or add more RAM (?), or (2) hope I have Vista because it's easy.

I don't know what the point is to the partitioning...could someone educate me? Also, I'm too low on space to even scan/defrag...not sure I'd have the space for another program. Is there a way to delete the unused parition and have that free space pushed over to the active hard drive? Or is my only other option to backup everything on c/ and reformat?

You should be able to use a freeware partitioning tool like Gparted to repartition your drive. See How to boot from a G-Parted-Live-CD(use the instructions to download and build your own Gparted

But be cautious and do your backups first (is always wise)