Partition Issue

[Agent OnG]

Okay.....I'm easily a NOOB at computer issues, so here is the scenario.

I found a computer at a yard sale. Dell Studio One 19 Desktop. Got it for a heck of a price because owner said it wouldn't even turn on.

So I plugged it in, and it came on. Ran system repair.

It began to boot up, but it would go to a black screen with the mouse on it. After about 2 minutes it would reboot. It is running on Vista. They original owner did not have any of the discs that came with the PC so I could do a system recovery.

To fix this I put in a Windows 7 Upgrade disc and had it boot/install this. Now when it did it caused my problem.

Currently the Disk is 500 GB split into 3 partitions:
Partition 1: OEM - 39 MB
Partition 2: Primary - 14 GB
Partition 3: Primary - 451 GB

Now apparently both Vista & 7 are installed on Partition 2 and 7 is partially installed on Partition 3. Not a big deal, except that with both OS on Partition 2 it only has about 800 MB of free space. Now Partition 2 is my C: and Partition 3 is D:. The problem I'm coming into is whenever I install software or hardware it wants to install on C: (I have been able to command some of it the software to install on D, which is now of course full.

So my question is now that I'm running this PC on Windows 7, what are my options?

Is there any way I could shrink partition 3 and move that free/unassigned space to partition 2?

Please help all of you people here that are smarter than me. Thanks.

 

[sminlal]

If you don't need anything in the existing partitions then I'd just delete all of them and create a new partition (or partitions) for your Windows 7 install.

 

[Agent OnG]

how?

I don't have the original disks....so won't I lose all my drivers? Also, since my version of Windows 7 is just an upgrade will that allow me to do that? Do I just reinstall Windows 7?

 

[sminlal]

What do you mean by "drivers"? Windows has built-in drivers to handle all the standard devices, so unless you've got something special in the system it shouldn't be a problem. And for most add-on devices you can download drivers from the manufacturer's web site. The things to watch out for are:

- very old devices that don't have Windows 7 drivers
- software that only allows a limited number of installations. For example, the Adobe product suites should be "unregistered" before you wipe a system so that you don't "use up" your install count for them.


The Windows 7 upgrade will work fine if there's a previous OS on the system when it boots from the install disk, even if you then delete it and create new partitions. And in fact there's even a workaround you can use to install onto a virgin disk, see: http://www.winsupersite.com/article/win7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media

 

[cbxbiker61]

Install Linux, forget about the Windows licensing snafu.