You cannot format the system drive (C in Windows. It will stop you.
Attempting to merge drives C: and D: in Drive Manager, however, removes all
partition information. The message you are getting says it all.

It is likely that the D: drive was a small partition (probably 1GB or so)
designed for backing up your Documents and Settings folder. If so, merging
the two might not gain you much. However you recover from this, I suggest
you buy an external hard drive to use to back up your system regularly. If
you decide to shop for an external drive, keep in mind that your laptop
should have a usb port to take advantage of an external device and that you
can buy external drives with bundled backup software. Buy a drive that is
at least double the size of the drive in your laptop. It will also come in
handy for storing some of the things that prompted you to try to make more
space.

Use the restore disks that came with your computer. Your laptop requires
motherboard drivers, device drivers, and utility programs that are specific
for your computer and you need the restore program to get those back onto
your system. Good luck.

"Zattack" wrote in message
...
I may be too late but... Have sony vaio laptop with XP home. Had drive
partitioned to a c primary and d extended. Ran into issues as the c drive
was full and nothing was going to d. Went into drive management and
formatted d drive, as only data stored there was copies of program files
that also existed in c drive. Upon attmpt to make it merge back with c
drive, formatted it to also be primary drive. Didn't touch c drive, but
upon restart laptop only displays one message: operating system not
found.

I have Sony recovery disks but they simply prompt me to totally reformat
and
start installation of system. Have I lost my data and is there any way to
get the laptop to boot correctly to for now at least get back to where I
was
before the issues?