Well, it _can_ use the partition, provided the partition is on a favored disk type (specifically _not_ SATA, not sure what the other restrictions are). But: 1) this isn't the "normal" mode of operation, you wouldn't do it that way unless you also want to be able to boot natively from that partition, or perhaps if the partition was pre-existing. 2) You don't install Windows from VMWare if you use a physical partition, you install it directly, and then kinda "import" the whole partition into VMWare. If you really want to do this, look up "physical" as in "physical device" or "physical partition" on VMWare's help site. (I abandoned it when I discovered my original windows install was on an unsupportable SATA drive--I'm now _more_ than happy with the normal install types (which, btw, use a dynamically allocated filespace for the virtual partition, so are much smaller). Cheers, Simon "You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." Naguib Mahfouz __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com