Windows 7 Installation - Which Partitions Can Delete
Apr 12, 2010
My computer is knackered and I want to wipe it clean and start again. I don't want to keep ANY of what's on there as it had a virus that corrupted my internet explorer and I want to fix it. I have backed everything I do want up onto disk already.So I'm installing windows 7 custom installation from rebooting it as it says, but it gives me options to format or delete 3 partitions: 1 is a reserved small space (~1.5GB i think), the other is the vista operating system (~55GB), the last is a data partition (~50GB). So now I don't know which I can and can't delete in order to clean my computer completely, yet still have it working and working via windows 7! What is the difference between formatting and deleting anyway, will formatting clean my explorer of the virus it had?
I cant installing windows 7 or 8 on any partition (D, E, F, G) except C partition, so I try to delete them and create a new partition but I cant also (delete and new icon are disable).
I can't delete my windows 7 partition. I tried command prompt and diskmgmt.msc, but whenever i right click the partition it shows the 'delete volume' option in gray and i can't click it. When i did it in command prompt using the diskpart command it didn't work. I used override and i got this "Delete is not allowed on the current boot, system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume"
I'm in need of a software ( free/trial/or paid) to recover my important datas that is collected since 10 years!It happened to a laptop with win 7 installed.It had 4 partitions. One boy copied datas from c: drive to d: drives.Now the datas were in d: e: f: drives.Now the boy installed win 7 formatting the c: drive only. witnesses say the installation showed individual drives.I was not present that time.After installation win 7 shows only one drive - OS C: with the whole drive as one partition with win 7 installed in it.Now how can I restore the datas There was about 130 gb data in d: e: f: drives.
i was setting up my new laptop to be a dual boot machine (W7 + Ubuntu) but got an error message that i was already at the maximum number of partitions on my HDD. there is my C drive, a G drive called data (19.53GB, containing recovery_dvd 1, 2, and 3 .iso's) and two recovery partitions ( 11GB and 100MB, the 100MB one says it is active. are both recovery drives and the G Data necessary? i burned what thought was a recovery disk when i got the computer, but looking back i think i accidently burned a system repair disk instead. i also have a backup on an external harddrive (it confirms it in the backup and restore window). 180GB in C drive so its too much to backup on to dvds at this point, unless that's what recovery_dvd iso's in G drive are for? they are small enough to burn, so i would be happy with doing that and removing both recovery partitions if necessary.
I'm trying to install Windows 7 x64 on a machine that currently has the Windows 7 RC on it. When I boot from the DVD, it immediately goes into "Windows is loading files...", which it does for 30 minutes or so and then reboots, at which point I get a message that says that Windows cannot start because files have changed.
Normally when I boot from the DVD, the first thing it asks me is whether I want to create/delete partitions, do a fresh install or an upgrade, etc. I'm not getting any of that. Anyone know what's wrong?
I have spent the last couple of days playing around with my new Asus Zenbook Prime (UX31A-DB51). Being that it only has a 128 GB SSD in it, I would like to delete the 10 GB recovery partition (already made a backup ISO using Asus's included AI Recovery software) and expand my main C: partition to take back that 10 GB. There is also a 4 GB Parition on the drive, but I do not know what that is for. Listed below are the four partitions my drive is broken into and the descriptions provided for them in the Disk Management tool.
I have used the Disk Management tool on previous Windows 7 PCs to delete/shrink/expand partitions?what that third partition above would be for and if I can delete it to absorb into my main OS C: partition?Second, the 10.00 GB Recovery Partition does not give me the option to delete/shrink/expand the partition at all? When I right-click on the partition, all it does is popup a Help link.After loading on the essential apps for us (Photoshop Elements 10, Zune, Office Pro 2010, Microsoft Security Essentials, and a few other small apps), We are down to about 60 GB of space remaining, so if there is a way to take back that 10-14 GB, it would come in handy.
While looking for solutions I seemed to come very close to finding someone with my exact problem, but not quite. Here goes:
I had a hard drive with Windows 7 installed. Everything worked, etc. Got a new hard drive, and installed 7 on there as well without making changed to the old hard drive (prompts displayed during new installation saying "old" windows files would be saved). I've been using it for a while now, however I want to use the old hard drive strictly for storage, so I tried to format it to clear the space out. I got the notice "Windows cannot complete format." Went to the forums and looked thru several suggestions, which brought me to try deleting the files individually.
Included in all this were attempts to give myself (the only user on the computer) full control of all files (which was already the case), to take ownership (via right click options AND command prompt "takeown" and "cacls"), to change permissions/ownership via "properties" for the drive/folders, command prompts to remove the "active" status of the old hard drive, as well as removing "boot" status from old drive (while making sure the new drive had "boot" status), tried everything I can think of using Disk Management AND the DiskPart utility, as well as countless other suggestions that I can barely remember. I'm still getting the "You need permission to perform this action." What I don't get is, if I'm THE administrator (and the only user), how do I not have access to this?
I'm sure there are some details I'm leaving out, but I've been at it for hours. Let me know if there's something you need to know. Running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit, 4GB RAM, 3.2 Ghz AMD Athlon II.
I just bought a laptop that appears to have been partitioned too many times and I can't figure out how to delete the partitions and "absorb" them back into one drive.
I have 2 hard drives, and my main hard drive has now become my secondary. I have managed to delete almost everything on the drive, except three mischievous undeleteable files. There is $RECYCLE.BIN, a folder called Boot with BCD and BCD.LOG which are to my efforts undeletable, and a folder calls System Volume Information, which seems to replicate itself each time I delete it. How can I delete these files? I have tried formatting, however windows will not let me format. Taking ownership does nothing to them. When I try to delete BCD or BCD.LOG: "The action can't be completed because the file is open in System."
I have Win 7 installed and thats the only one I need.From what I see in the forum threads, in my case the MSCONFIG does not show 3 other previous versions of OS (1 XP, 1 incomplete installation XP and 1 DOS).I already tried from My Computer, Advanced Settings, Start Up and set to 0 the time elapsed to show other OS options at start up, but when I did it went directly to the incomplete installation of XP (instead of my default OS - Win 7)So, what I would like to know is that if I use the BCD software you recommed that will do the trick or if I need to try something else.
One of my friends has a windows 7 computer with an account for himself, his mother and his 2 sisters. All the home directorys are stored in drive C. Partition D is shared. The question is, how to get a partition layout like this?
Partition 1: OS + programs Partition 2: home partition for himself Partition 3: home partition for his mother Partition 4: home partition for his sister Partition 5: home partition for his other sister Partition 6: shared partition for some photos.
I need to replace a W2K computer on a domain with a Windows 7 computer(laptop), but I want to keep the same computer name.I need the ip, username, profile to stay the same. Can I delete the computer from the domain and name the new computer that name I deleted and still keep the users profile on the new machine, as if it was the old one?
What is the policy for Removable USB Drives in Windows? Does it only recognize the first partition? Is there any difference between FAT32 and NTFS? I am asking because time to time, I am not able to see the partitions in Windows, and I wanted to learn about its policy (rules I mean) about Removable USB Drives (What I mean is Flash drives I guess, when the USB Drives are connected; it is not showing up in the drivers, but in Removable Devices).
im due a fresh install of Windows 7 64bit the way i do this is to make a copy of my existing OS and put that on a second drive, i then keep this and use it as my main OS, i then put a new copy of Windows 7 on my main drive and move the stuff over from the back up that i want to keep, this way i know i wont lose anything. this time i want to partition my main drive and have dual boot one for normal use and one for gaming but when i did the back up the hdd drive i was using had a partition on it and the OS told me that i had to delete the partitions so i could install Windows 7. is there something i need to do first to be able to have 2 OS's in 2 partitions on one drive or is it just not possible to do?
On a Toshiba latop I suddenly have 2 WIN RE partitions?? One with more on it than the other! can I delete the superfluous one and dlete the RE name in the obvious System partition?
I have just got Windows 7 Ultimate.I accept the Licence Agreement, set my partitions as i want them but when it gets to the expanding files part it will hang at 0%. This happens on both the 32 & 64 bit disc.This is a brand new purchase which I opened it about an hour ago.The laptop has a 400GB HD and 2GB of ram. It came with Home Prem x64 pre-installed, So the hardware meets the requirements.What seems to be the problem?
I just bought a new hard drive and a brand new Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit disc and I am doing a clean install on the new hard drive. it seems that everything is going normal, but at a random time during the installation, the computer just shuts off.sometimes it doesn't even get to the installation when it shuts off. sometimes it shuts off in the middle of the "windows is loading files..." black screen. there are no beeps when it shuts off or when I turn it back on. there are also no error codes.whenever i turn it back on it simply acts as if it never tried to install windows and starts the boot all over from the disc
So i have a new SSD Corsair Force 3 240 gig and all I want to do is install Windows 7 Pro on it. This board does not support parted magic (cannot wake from sleep and there are no onboard video to wake up to) so ive resorted to clean all.I have not been able to successfully boot the OS on the SSD. I never intended on setting up raid but apparently all the literature i see is on raid. I created a USB install disk as reccomended onto a 8gig ntfs primary active did the bootsect /nt60 X: and it successfully worked copied the cd over to the flash drive and copied the rste drivers in a folder called drivers My SSD is installed on port 1 6gig sata intel (as this board doesnt have marvel apparrently) My DVD is installed on 3gig Sata port 6 I set up Raid in the bios as reccomended by others (as this is the only way to install ssd?).
Nothing UEFI is enabled There are no other drives hooked up to the computer. Just SSD, USB cordless mouse, keyboard and no network cord or WIFI i started with a clean ssd as reccomended my bios recognized the ssd on post i booted into the win 7 install (MBR not uefi) i loaded the 64 bit rste drivers from asus as reccomended by others i left the machine to install the usb then booted into windows install (for whatever reason) i pushed f8 to boot my corsair windows brings up an error on a black screen File: windows/system32/drivers/adpahci.sys driver did not load Status: oxc0000221 Info: Windows Failed to load because of a critical system driver is missing or corrupt
I agree that to run DOS stuff on Windows 7 a DOSshell is the way to go, but I had a DOS and Linux partitions setup before I installed Windows 7 and guess what, it doesn't see them at all! It seems like Windows 7 isn't backward compatable at all, or perhaps doesn't read FAT16 (EXT3 I didn't expect it to read), will check FAT32...Yup reads FAT32 from USB sticks, but reads FAT16 from USB Sticks, just not FAT16 first partition (MSDOS6.22) from the main SATA drive (C: is the fourth and last partition).
I have question regarding shrinking of partitions in Windows 7 !I am unable to recover windows due corruption of OS. I have only single partition in which Win 7 is installed. Can I somehow shrink the partition to create Unallocated space to perform a parallel installation to save my data?
I installed Windows7 Ultimate from scratch, and it warns that it might create a 100MB partition before creating a second one where the real stuff lives. This makes imaging more complicated.
Code: # fdisk -luDisk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectorsUnits = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytesSector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytesI/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytesDisk identifier: 0xf1f75308 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System/dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFSPartition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary./dev/sda2 206848 30722047 15257600 7 HPFS/NTFS/dev/sda3 172908544 254828543 40960000 83 Linux
Does someone know why Windows7 needs two partitions, and whether it's possible to have a single partition?
I'm also interested to know if any steps are required before imaging Windows7 (sysrep, etc.) where the image will be reinstalled on the same host (own test machine).
I have just deleted all partitions on my laptop hard drive to install windows 7 and messed something up...I know cannot install windows 7 as it just sticks at the setup is starting screen..can I put the drive in my pc (running xp) and save it somehow ? I have nothing on the laptop to repair or anything as far as I can see ...
I once had a dual-boot Windows XP Professional SP3 and Windows 7 Professional. Partition 1 could be accessed from both OS, but Windows 7 could not and still cannot 'see' Partitions 2 and 3. While it was still a dual-boot, switching back and forth between the systems was the only way I could access the data in Partitions 2&3 from Windows XP. Now that I have a clean install of Windows 7 only, (stupid me to have forgotten this problem) I cannot access the files at all. I have tried restarting the system, reinstalling the HD driver, replugging the HD, and the problem still persists. What I have managed so far:
> Under 'Device Manager' >> No warning. All drivers are updated.
> Under 'My Computer' >> Only Partition 1 is listed and accessible
> Under 'Computer Management' > 'Disk Management' >> All three partitions are in the disk's table. The 2nd and 3rd partitions are listed with blue bars, total space allocated and no other information. An attempt to get Properties or assign drive letters produces an error message "... Disk Managaement control view is not up-to-date ... ".
> Under 'partdisk' >> 'list disk' shows correctly sized Disk at 700 GB >> 'list volume' shows only up to Partition 1 of the external HD. >> After selecting the external HD, 'list partition' shows all 3 partitions with correct sizes and offsets.
> With MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition Disk 1_______ G: Partition 1 *: Partition 2 *: Partition 3 >> All 3 partitions can be explored (whew ...) >> The two 'missing' partitions were not hidden. >> However, when assigning the drive letters to the partitions, the drive letters only stay in front of the partitions' names until I clicked Apply. After which, the asterisks came back again. (I haven't found any way to assign the drive letter in Partition Wizard Bootable CD
Windows 7 doesn't recognize my D partition though windows XP used to recognize it just fine on my computer, and it also used to work fine on that HDD using that same version of windows 7 on my old computer. My computer is a Dell Optiplex 745 and my HDD is WD10EARS (No Jumpers is being used) Here is a Screen of the installation Process
Today while listening to a song. My computer restarted with a BSOD. It then asked me to repair my computer saying that some boot record is corrupt. I repaired my computer from the cd. It works fine but now i can only see my C: and no other drives are being shown though the data is still there. I cant see the remaining three partitions in my computer
I have installed Windows 7 next to my old Windows XP (so it's a dualboot situation). I have 2 physical HDD's (320 GB each) and 6 logical drives (2 + 4 primary partitions, all NTFS). After installing Windows 7, two of 4 partitions in one hdd have become inaccessible - disk manager still shows them, but I can't neither set a drive letter, nor view properties. I get the following error:
"The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view by usin the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart computer."
Both of the inaccessible partitions are fine in Windows XP. Any ideas or solutions ?
