Problem with HDD - extended partition cannot be undone- help

[ijamjl]

Hello all,

I am seeking help because my father's laptop, which runs Windows 7, (Lenovo 7758) has two partitions in the HDD: one has 29.2 GB and the other has 105 GB. The C: drive is the one with 29.2 GB, and obviously it's going to run out of space. I wanted to delete the larger partition, and then extend the C: drive so that it becomes larger altogether. However, in Disk Management, I am unable to do so. Therefore, I figured I could just reformat (he's been needing to do it soon anyways) the entire computer, and just combine the partitions together at the same time. I did not do this to the hard drive, so I have no idea how or who did this.

However, the Windows 7 installer does not combine the two unallocated storages into one. When trying to install Windows 7 into the larger partition, it gives me an error:

Windows could not create a partition on disk 0. The error occurred while preparing the partition selected for installation. Error code 0x8004240F

I assume that it might have something to do with the fact that it's an extended partition rather than primary. How can I combine these two partitions into one?

 

[WyomingKnott]

I sincerely hope that you are trying to install a new installation of Windows. What has been done so far has wiped out the data that was on the drive, although it can be recovered.

Assuming that this is what you meant to do, you can either let Win7 partition and format the drive for you (it will ask during the installation procedure), or wipe the drive clean first by downloading a bootable distro such as Parted Magic, burning a CD, booting from the CD, and deleting both partitions on the drive.

If you need anything that was on that drive, let us know and some people with experience recovering data will weigh in.

 

[ijamjl]

WyomingKnot,

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I was trying to install a clean copy of Windows onto the laptop. All the data is already gone, and I've reinstalled Windows 7 onto the smaller partition for now, mainly only because that's all I could do.

Anyhow, I somehow could delete the larger partition now (once in the newly installed Windows 7), and then could extend it. I don't know why I couldn't do it before (unless I previously had Windows Vista and didn't realize it?). I thank you for taking the time to try and help me out, though!