partition

Infopackets Reader Philip S. writes: " Dear Dennis, We are running Windows 10 on our office machine which has Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) installed. On that machine we use Microsoft SQL Server Manager to enter in data into our databases, though other ... machines can access the Microsoft SQL databases through the network using MS Access DSN files. A few years ago we hired someone to set up our databases; however, we are now running out of space on the C drive as the databases have grown significantly in size. We would like to move the MS SQL databases and then set up a RAID to make the data redundant ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Ted G. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thank you for your pearls of wisdom! I have a question regarding VMWare Workstation . I recently virtualized a friend's PC which was facing numerous blue screens - I suspect his PC has a hardware ... error. After virtualizing the machine I mapped his drive in Windows Explorer; when I try to access c:\users\jim (his user folder), Windows keeps giving me an ' Access denied ' error. There does not seem to be any way to access his files using this method. For the record I have tried copying the files by networking his virtual machine to mine but it is ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Scott writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm thinking of turning on disk encryption for my Windows 10 computer. I've never done this before. Is there anything to be concerned about or to be aware of? " My response: This is a good question. ... The truth of the matter is that if you encrypt your entire C drive using Windows BitLocker or a third party utility, it's going to slow your system down quite a bit. The reason for this is because every single file written to the drive must be encrypted, and then decrypted when read - including your operating system files. Constantly encrypting and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Tom S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an older Windows Vista machine and I'm trying to upgrade it to a clean install of Windows 7. The problem is that this PC is an all-in-one unit, and the DVD drive is broken; replacing it would ... be extremely difficult. I had a friend of mine convert the Windows 7 installation DVD into a bootable USB thumb drive, but it appears that my system does not support booting from USB. I also tried running the Windows setup.exe file from the thumb drive on my Vista desktop, but I receive a message that 'Windows installation could not be started from ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Pat S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am running Windows 7 and I'm trying to shrink my C drive, but Windows won't let me shrink it to the desired size - even though I have tons of free space. I have a 500 GB drive and I'm trying to ... shrink the volume to 250 GB. Whenever I try to shrink the C drive it only lets me shrink 70GB. Can you help? " My response: I have had this problem many times in the past - especially when I am trying to shrink the C drive for my clients so that I can split the drive in half and make a disk image backup onto the second partition. The reason why you can ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Todd G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am using Windows 10 and I have VMWare workstation installed. I have been playing around with a CentOS (Linux) virtual machine for the last few months. When I first created the virtual machine, I ... selected the default size for the operating system which is 8 gigabytes. However, I'd like to create a larger partition because I am running out of space. I am using the Ext4 file system with a logical volume for my primary partition. I tried using gparted to increase the volume size on /dev/sda, but when I rebooted, the 'df -h' command shows that my ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Vince C. writes: " Dear Dennis, Every time I try to upgrade to Windows 10, I receive an error message stating that 'We couldn't update the system reserved partition'. My Windows 7 is on an SSD (solid state hard drive) with 62.2 GB ... free space. According to the 'Disk Management' utility, my System Reserved partition is 99.9 mb with what looks to be 65 mb free space. How can I increase the size of the System Reserved partition so that I can upgrade to Windows 10? " My response: You can use a partition editing tool to increase the size of the System Reserved partition. That ... (view more)