help with creating a xp only partition

ok so when i first got my notebook i deleted the recovery partition and then reinstalled xp on my 100gb hd (93gb actually). now its been 4 months and im noticeing that xp is not running as smooth as it use to, im sure some of you know exactly what im talking about. so i figured that i would reformat my hd and give it a 15gb partition for xp and reinstall xp and then have the other 78gb there for media. I have read that this is a good plan to take because if xp ever crashed i would still have my media files intact and i can more easily refresh xp every couple of months.

so i popped in the xp cd and tired to do this and im haveing less then stellar resluts. I got xp reinstalled and im useing the comp to type this so i can get it to work BUT i was not able to make a 15gb partion like i wanted and i did not reformat the hd like i wanted. all i ended up doing is reinstalling xp and thats it. at the screen (blue with white text) that askes you to pick the partition that you want to install xp on i tried to delete the 93gb partition and reformat it. so that I could creat a new 15gb one and it wouldnt let me......so i know that this can be done but im lacking the know how here so can someone please guide me or at least point me in the right direction.

 

You need a program like partitionmagic or partition manager. Im not aware of any free programs.

 

GParted will do the trick.
It's free, and linux-based, however there's a live CD image you can download, burn, then boot from to use it.

 

so if im not framiliar with linux at all will i be able to understand GParted and use it?

is this not that common of a thing to do to a HD?? i know that if i was to have a brand new HD it would let me give it a partition..

 

You can also use Paragon Partition Manager, safer than Norton's PartitionMagic.

 

What's unsafe about Partition Magic?

 

ok im looking for a free way to do this, im really not down with having to pay for a program (yes im one of those poeple)

also what if i were to find a program that would completely reformat the entire HD, wouldnt the xp cd give me the option then to give xp a 15gb partition?

i really dont care about anything that i have on the comp at this time because i have put all my media on a ext. HD for safe keeping.

 

is there a reason you didn't partition and format during the XP install?

 

the free program would be Gparted as someone said above. it works fantastically to re-organize partitions.

 

well it would not let me reformat and repartition