• Where's My Copy of Vista •

Free From Pre-Installed Programs & Partitions

Hi

I would like to ask a couple of questions regarding to Vista being pre-installed on my computer.

First what I would like to know is if I can do a fresh install of Vista using the one that is pre-installed on my Computer. Further to this I want to get rid of the space consuming partitions that have been pre set-up when I bought the laptop. At the moment the computer relies on the D:\ (69 GB pretty much unused) & PQSERVICE (about 10GB) Drive partitions to do backups & restores.

Instead I would like have one partition C:\ use an application such as Acronis True Image & an external Hard Drive to make Backups & store them.
Obviously I could make a Backup Disc with Acer's eRecovery management but that would only restore my computer to the exact state it was in when I bought it; along with all the cr*pware & the unused partitions. Yes I could uninstall all the cr*pware etc but I don't want to do that; it makes the computer messy. Also I don't think Acer or the company I bought the computer from will provide me with original Vista disc.

My second question is if I were to do this successfully and the OS was stored on one partition & I wanted to go back to revert to the exact factory state it was in when I bought
exact Partiton , would I be able to use a computer Image of my computer now and restore it including all three partitions.

Would any be able to help me to do this, or give me any advice on this issue please.


Best Regards

Store bought systems use partitions (often hidden) to store the OS and install\recovery files on, and rarely do you get a disk any more, they also tend to include recovery software\instructions, and if you ever want to wipe everything maybe through infection or selling it on at a future point, you use this procedure to restore it to out of the box state, and make you you select destructive recovery to ensure wiping ALL files other than what comes with the system, once done it will be like you just bought the system, first boot will ask names etc to create accounts and that before you can start using it.

From what you appear to be after this it what it sounds like you want to do now, I appreciate you don't want all that comes with this, but it's the safest approach, if you try and create a new install you run the risk of wiping\corrupting the hidden partition the system uses to recover itself, more so when formatting, and once thats gone thats it so my best advice is use the systems recovery option ands go back to out of the box, this will give you a clean install which is your first goal.

Once reinstalled you can delete the partition you don't want, eg D:\, but do NOT touch the small partition, this is required by the system, I don't know what it's for exactly, but my fear is deleting it could cause serious corruption making future recovery impossible, so as I can't be sure I wont go further except to say don't touch that unless you know exactly what it would mean to the system.
The D:\ drive however can be happily deleted, and the space recovered back to the C:\ drive so you in effect have a single hard drive, the problem I have here is although I know it can be done, and that I can do it, I can't guide very well, it's one of the areas I stumble around in, but not often enough to have a deep knowledge in it, but the software I have used for this in the past is Partition Magic, but it isn't free, although the free trial may allow full function to use for your needs, but here are some links to do with this area, hope they help.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums…7d-9fba387e4f0d 3rd response suggests it may be possible using vista, no real instruction but a picture shows some promise.
http://www.vistarewired.com/2007/02/16/how…n-windows-vista This looks like a solution, it takes the previous link to include further instructions, hope something here helps.

Hi 8210Guy

Store bought systems use partitions (often hidden) to store the OS and install\recovery files on.

Yes that's correct these OS files are stored on the PQSERVIVE Partition which is about 10GB in size & is hidden, so I'll leave that well alone.

The D:\ drive however can be happily deleted, and the space recovered back to the C:\ drive so you in effect have a single hard drive

I think the D:\ drive has something to do with any Backups Acer makes. I also read that the "My Documents" Folder can be stored here so if the user needed to do a factory restore the files in the folder would remain once the restore has been completed. I'd rather not store documents; Music, picture etc locally to the D:\ drive but instead use Acronis & an external Hard Drive to make any backups.

It has also been suggested to me that Programs & Applications can be installed on the D:\. I tried this on my old laptop but all it did was store the files on D: and took the memory from the C:\ drive. In addition to this when I had to do a factory restore none of the programs worked & I was just left with a load of dead files on D:\So would it be safe to at least shrink it to a size that will allocate more space to the C:\ drive rather than deleting it all together?

Hi, yeah you can just as easily adjust the partition size(s) if you wanted to keep the D:\ partition and simply reduce it, but this can only be done with adjoining partitions (which you have here), you can't jump one to get to another, but initially you were after a single drive which is why I said to delete it, as to the location of the back up's I am unsure whether they use the C or the D drive on such builds, but I can tell you vista takes 15% by default for this, but I can tell you how to change this if you wanted to so it doesn't eat up too much space.
But a quick thing to try, it may aid identifying the restore drive location, launch the cmd console with admin rights, then copy and pate the following into it, and hit enter, if we're lucky it will report which drive it's on, been a while so can't recall what it shows now, when done type exit and enter to close the cmd prompt.

vssadmin list shadowstorage

As to installing to the D drive, as you said it's fine for that install, but should you reinstall all of the files lose they're associations and become useless, so your left deleting junk you can't use, so stick to the C drive for installations, at least you know where you are that way, but as your no doubt aware you can set up the system so the usual My Documents etc folders are saved on the D drive, this means should the system fail, a reinstall (as long as you do not select destructive reinstall) will leave the files on the D drive which minimises the risk of lost files, but this is a PITA to set up for each program or manually remembering to save as to select the D drive each time.

If you want a plain jane system without all the junk, you need a plain ol' Vista installation disc. That disc can be used with the product key attached to the bottom of your computer for a CLEAN install. Otherwise, your only option is the recovery partition or discs the manufacturer gave you. Acer probably already paritioned your drive out into two partitions. C: and D:. I believe they are one of the manufacturers that do that. To be honest I hate the fact they do that. I consistently see this type of setup where the C: drive is completely full do to the small size they give it, and the D: drive is completely empty. Most people do not understand the difference between the C: and the D: drive and just want to click "save." Its ridiculous for the manufacturer to do this out of the box, and there is no valid reason for doing so. Vista backups are worthless as are any backups that are stored on the same hard drive that you are trying to protect. If the drive fails (about the only time you're actually going to want your backup) your backups are lost anyways. You are correct in using Acronis and an external hard drive for backups. To add to the problems, it seems many name brand machines have Vista backing up to the recovery partition (which fills up in about a week) either intentionally, or by default. Next thing you know you are getting drive space messages on a brand new machine. If you ever want the chance of recovering with the factory image you must leave the factory recovery partition. Other than that you can do what you want. I can say that installing program files on a different drive for the purpose of saving them during a reformat is useless also. There are hundreds of thousands of changes to the operating system and registry that will be made by the programs you install. Those are lost when you reinstall and the programs are broken. It will also cause you problems because too many programs are poorly written and when they end up in a location other than the default C: drive, they freak out. Storing My Documents automatically on a different drive does ease the burden of reinstalling your OS if you ever want to. My Documents can be redirected to any location by right-clicking it and click properties.

Hi 8210GUY & thank you very much for the abundance helpful of information but I've made a sort of a U-Turn.
If you have the time would you mind having a look at my thread here please?

Replied in there for you, will probably try and get this one closed or merged for you to avoid cross talking\posting, but appleoddity makes an excellent point that if the hard drive goes bad, or even if an infection corrupted the registry bad enough the partition will be gone, and everything with it, so it does make some mockery of the idea behind it.