CREATING A PASSWORD RESET DISK ON A COMPUTER THAT IS A MEMBER OF A WOR...

98, you could format drive C as FAT or FAT32. You should then format the system par-

tition that will hold Windows XP as NTFS. Finally, for multiple booting to be successful,

the boot partition must be formatted using a file system that all installed operating sys-

tems can access. For example, if you are dual-booting between Windows XP and Win-

dows 95, the boot partition (as well as the system partition on which Windows 95 is

installed) would have to be formatted with FAT.

Converting a FAT or FAT32 Volume to NTFS

Windows XP Professional provides the Convert command for converting a partition to

NTFS without reformatting the partition and losing all the information on the partition.

To use the Convert command, click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open text box,

and then click OK. This opens a command prompt, which you use to request the Con-

vert command. The following example shows how you might use switches with the

Convert command.

Convert volume /FS:NTFS [/V] [/CvtArea:filename] [/NoSecurity] [/X]

Table 2-2 lists the switches available in the Convert command and describes their functions.

Table 2-2

Convert Command Switches

Switch Function Required

Volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), volume

Yes

mount point, or volume name that you want to convert

/FS:NTFS Specifies converting the volume to NTFS Yes

/V Runs the Convert command in verbose mode No

/CvtArea:filename Specifies a contiguous file in the root directory to be the

No

placeholder for NTFS system files

/NoSecurity Sets the security settings to make converted files and

directories accessible by everyone

/X Forces the volume to dismount first, if necessary, and all

open handles to the volume are then not valid