i took my pc to pc world to sort out a problemand when i got it back somehow they had installed XP on FAT32 not NTFC? as far as i was aware u couldnt can anyone explain this plz?

if you already have a fat32 partition on ur HDD then winxp can be installed. other wise if you have NT on an NTFS partition you cannot convert to FAT.

I Think they are trying to make you go over to NTFS as it is more secure, but you can install on a FAT32 Drive,

Hope this helps

how would i go about converting back to ntfs?

erm dunno. i suppose FDISKing it Or formatting it and then converting when you install XP again!

ok, thanx

You can convert a FAT to NTFS. Don't know how safe it is but when I did it with an NT workstation, I didn't have any problems.

convert c: /fs:ntfs

Personally unnless you have a real need for the NFTS... like a very large partition size or working with files over 9 GB or the added security features Stick with FAT32, you'll find good reasons why in this post somewhere
http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=27788

actuall come to think of it im losing 10gig as i have a 30 gig drive and its only showing 20, how safe is that option posted by DMC, convert c: /fs:ntfs

will i lose my work or does it convert it without formating the drive and losing ur work?

Well, when I did it, I had NT workstation 4.0 on and it stayed their after the conversion. I didn't lose anything and I haven't seen any warnings about this command anywhere. I'm fairly confident that it works but if you're gonna try it, you might wanna backup your data as with anything else like this.

I know two people who did this and it worked fine for them (they already had Xp on a Fat32 partition)
but since i am a purist i always format before installing a new OS

Originally posted by 1k memory
actuall come to think of it im losing 10gig as i have a 30 gig drive and its only showing 20, how safe is that option posted by DMC, convert c: /fs:ntfs

will i lose my work or does it convert it without formating the drive and losing ur work?

You're not losing 10gig because of FAT32. Maybe you have un-partioned space or Windows is using the rest for system restore or something. Try fdisk that should show you where your space is.