Windows and partitions

Snakebear

Solid State Member
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I just bought a new Acer Laptop and it came with Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit and a 320gb HDD. There are two issues I have. One, the hdd is partitioned into 2 140gb drives and whatever else for the other 40gigs(doesn't show). I would like to combine it all into 1 drive and free up the missing space. Two, the thing came loaded with crapware. I removed most of it and removed the unnecessary stuff from startup. However I'm still kind of convinced stuff's there that doesn't need to be. So basically what I'm getting at here is I figured a fresh install of windows should handle both problems. Not a restore via the Acer supplied utilities but a new copy of windows and I have a couple questions about that. Do I need to run some sort of partitioning program to re-combine the drive, or can I do this via windows install? Also, I believe windows' keys are specific to each copy, as in I couldn't use the key provided with my laptop with a copy of windows I downloaded? I'm not trying to purchase windows when I already have it. Or if anyone knows how I can achieve these things without going through all this mess please let me know. Thanks.
 
Well, first of all you can disable/uninstall all of the "crap"ware. If you're still convenced, then disable more things.
To start from the begining:

When you pop your vista disk into the computer to reinstall one of the first steps will be to "choose your partition you want to install Windows Vista on". From there it shows all of the partitions. You go over them, and you can delete all of them, creating one big partition, 320gb.

Later on it will ask for the key, and yes, the key you have is specific to the CD. You can't just download a copy and use it on that... at least I don't think.

The Crapware you have, you can uninstall it. On XP there is the "Change or Remove Programs" and ALSO "Add/Remove Windows Components". Alot of the "Crapware" will be in there perhaps, but I DO NOT see that option on vista. You're going to have to deal with just the plain old uninstall. To disable you can go to start>run (if you have it enabled, if not hold down the windows logo key and press "r") and type in msconfig . You can stop the start up programs from there and disable services. But for the services I recommend going to run and putting in services.msc and going from there. You can disable any of that crapware from starting up.

As for the other 40gb partition you don't know what's up with, with most bought vista laptops they have a recovery part. You can open My Computer and there will probably be three disks.. the recovery one is probably the 40gb. If not maybe there are two partitions for stuff and the 40gb one is for the OS? No idea about that one ;)

-Q
 
There are only 2 drives showing, C: and D:. C has windows on it(143gb) and D: is just storage(139gb), I'm assuming the missing gigs are system restore stuff from Acer yes, I just wanna know if I can combine everything without having to buy another copy of windows.
 
Yes you can, but not without reinstalling.

You combine them (delete them) while reinstalling/reformatting.

-Q
 
With my acer disks? Won't that automatically reinstall it the way i came(partitioned) without the option to delete partitions and stuff as I would with just a normal windows install CD.
 
Oh lol, the laggy laptop is your post -_- That's why you're backing stuff up.

I don't think so dude, When it asks you if you want to restore or reformat your computer, choose reformat. You should be able to chose what partitions from there...

Guess you have to try it!
 
Yea, fixed the lag via your suggestion. That was actually not why I was asking, I was just curious about this since I bought the thing. I will probably wait till I get around to wanting to do another reformat again (takes me 6+ hours to uninstall all the crapware and download all my programs and stuff again). I don't feel like doing it at the moment but when I do I will try that thanks.
 
That extra 40GB was never there. It has to do with how the space is measured. The Hard Drive manufacturers say that there is 1000 bytes in a kilobyte, but windows says that there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte.
 
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