Actually my original post also told him he clearly didn't know what he is doing. He tried to install the partition and it didn't work. He clearly doesn't know what he is doing but I thought I might hurt his feelings so I edited that part out. Yes, maybe I should encourage him but I didn't. I've been dealing all week with people who fuck their computers up and then want someone to bails them out (primarily me) so people bumbling with their computers when they don't have the skill to was very salient to me and I probably jumped the gun and made an assumption when I shouldn't have. I'd rather have just erased my response but guess what? I can't because of the inability to do so. So, I left what I did.
Still, it isn't that bad of advice. It isn't like I called him a loser or something. If he can't figure it out and is just making it worse then he should just take it in and have someone who knows what he or she is doing fix it properly.