Regaining partitioned space?

[cwrighta70]

Hello, All. I have a Macbook Pro with 10.5.8. The drive used to be partitioned with Windows XP, but the partition was likely deleted incorrectly. When I open Disk Utility, I only see one drive/partition, but the available space is cut in half. If I choose the Partition tab and try to drag 'n resize the partition to include the full space, it attempts to resize, then fails.

How can I get this extra space back?

Thanks a ton!
Chris

 

[DeusInvictus7]

I had a problem like that once, where the drive was failing at restoring to one partition. The only way I found to fix it was to back things up and just do a full reformat of the system.

 

[cwrighta70]

Thanks, Deus. This is a work computer, and I was just given the computer to do some testing, so I was thinking about going that route. There is nothing on the computer that needs to be saved.

Do you have any quick steps for reformatting, or a link to a good step-by-step?

Thanks, again!
Chris

 

[DeusInvictus7]

The quickest way is to just pop in the OS X install disk, and restart. Once you hear the "DING!" or the white/grey screen come up, press and hold option before the Apple logo appears. Then you can select to boot off the OS X disk. From there it'll boot into the setup, and you can run Disk Utility to quickly erase the drive before reinstalling OS X. That whole process should take you about 40 minutes.

 

[cwrighta70]

Thanks again, Deus. It worked beautifully.

Have a good one...