I bought a new laptop it was loaded with vista. I removed it and put on XP, but the oem version had the hdd split into 2 partitions (probably 90% for os, 10% for some backup system for the oem) ... So I wanted to use PartitionMagic (v8) to redistribute the partions, but I keep getting an "Init failure: Error 117 - Partitions drive letter can't be identified" when I start it up. Anybody have this problem before and know how to fix it.

Also are there any non-commercial version of some program that does the same thing?

GPartEd.

Very well said, its freeware and easy to use.