??
I have Microsoft Windows XP operating system. I have a 40GB hard drive that shows only about 7GB capacity. How do I fix this problem without losing my data. I don't have a zip drive to backup everything. Please Help!

Is this a new computer?
Did you install a new hard drive or did it come this way?

Do you have more than one hard drive showing under My Computer? If so, you then have space on these partitions of your hard drive, so the space is still actually available, but perhaps as Drive D for instance.

Try booting from a boot disk and run FDISK. I believe option 4 lists your drives, partitions, etc.

Check to see if perhaps your hard drive has been partitioned. If so, it will list the drive letters for the various partitions. It should also indicate the size of the partitions. This would at least answer the question of whether there is truly a problem with the hard drive or whether it has just been partitioned.

Check Disk Management to see if there are unpartitioned places on your harddisk
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