How can I change to FAT32

I am now using WinXP Chinese version in which the file system is NTFS. However, I would like to change the file system to FAT32 for compatibility reasons. What can I do?
Can I reboot my computer with WinME diskette and format it again? Or any other better method I can use it?

Thank you for any suggestions.
Regards

Once the drive is formatted to NTFS you cannot go backwards without a complete fdisk and reformat. You will need a Windows 98 disk to fdisk the drive to partition the drive to 32 gigs or less per partition (fat32 is limited to 32 gigs or less ?? but that is what I have read). Then you can format the drive to fat32, followed by reinstalling the OS. If is just another drive other than the main drive there is procedure that you can do from within Windows XP or obtain knowledge base articles 309000, 313348, 310994 to help. This the best that I know of others may know different.

Best to You,
James
Omaha, NE
Home of the College World Series of Baseball
Starting in June on ESPN and ESPN II

There is a <i>formatting</i> limitation, but not because of the file system. Win2K and WinXP cannot format a partition as FAT32 that is 32GB or larger. They can create the partition ... they just can't format it unless you choose NTFS.

This does not apply to the FORMAT command on a Win9x boot disk, or a Win98 CD.

The only <i>partition</i> limitation is that FDISK cannot recognize or partition a drive that is over 137GB, because the current version of the file does not support 48-bit Logical Block Addressing. This doesn't affect the FAT32 file system, because this supposedly supports hard drives up to 2TB in size.

At the moment, the only work around for this situation, if you really wanted a single, large FAT32 partition on a drive that was 137GB or better would be to create the partition with a third-party program like <A HREF="http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/" target="_new">Partition Magic</A> (as mentioned by jiffy), or a Win2K/WinXP CD, or with a set of disk tools from the drive manufacturer ... format as NTFS, and then use Partition Magic to convert the file system from NTFS to FAT32.

This is, of course, assuming that your BIOS also supports 48-bit LBA.

Toey

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