Reformatting an Acer HD

[Swiscot]

Have purchased a 1 year old Acer Aspire 1650 laptop which has Win XP Pro German version installed. I prefer to work using the English language.
To convert to English have purchased an Upgrade Vista Business, English version to install.
During the Updating, Vista reports that the C: partition of 44.87 GB is Fat 32, (this is where the OS with Acer files are kept plus the hidden Partition PQ Service, 2.934GB) D: Partition is NFTS 45.35 GB and has nothing on it.
Vista stops the installation, tells me that as C: is Fat 32 to reformat the C: Partition using convert C:/fs:ntfs and then re-install the Vista Upgrade.

Does anyone have any experience of having done such a reformat of an Acer and what, if any, pitfalls can I expect?
Needless to say I do not have any OS or recovery discs of the present Win XP Pro set-up although the installation is genuine. Before making such a change I would like to make sure that It will work.
Thanks for any assistance

[Paul]

Yeah, Acer tends to do that. As far as I know, there should be something on the existing Windows XP installation that allows you to automatically convert the hard drive to NTFS from FAT32. I can't be certain, and since the laptop is used, even if it was there, it may have been removed.

That being said, the convert C:\fs:ntfs command doesn't reformat your hard drive, it's supposed to just convert it to the NTFS file system which Vista requires. But be sure to do plenty of research before going ahead with this, as I am not an Acer owner. Maybe someone else here will be able to help more.

[Swiscot]

Thanks for replying and will take up your suggestion to wait and see what others can advise

[Arla]

I converted my C drive to NTFS without any issues, however as with all operations that seriously impact your drives make sure you have a backup somewhere that you can restore to, because if it does go pear shaped you'll want it.

[Swiscot]

Thanks Arla
Message taken to heart!

[Icedmetal]

I also had the same message when I upgraded to Vista. I converted the file system with no problem other than it took some time.

[LIVEFRMNYC]

I always convert XP to NTFS. Haven't had a problem yet.

[starling]

I have an ACER laptop. I don't use Vista myself, and I have no plans to, but I certainly have converted both the C and D partitions to NTFS using the convert utility. It shouldn't cause any problems at all. Not a bad idea to back up important data, but to be honest, I only copied it onto the D partition just in case. But nothing ever happened.

[laptop1stop]

hi,
i wouldnt upgrade or convert anything, i always fdisk, remove all partitions then re-install the os booting from cd and formatting the hard drive fully with the ntfs file system.

as you have purchased the upgrade you have no choice, the file conversion requires a certain amount of space available, but workes fine.