Recovery Disk full, following upgrade of OS

Hi all, I'd be really grateful for some help. I'm not a very computer-literate person, so please bear with me. I recently purchase a Dell Studio Laptop which came with Vista as standard. I wanted to upgrade to Windows 7 before really starting to use the laptop, so it had very few files etc for me to worry about when going through the upgrade. Once through the upgrade process, I was required to connect to the internet for some updating. When it processed the updates (most failed to update), I got a message saying my Recovery Disk (D) was full. My D drive has only 9MB of free space! But my C Drive has about 90% free space. I presumed the upgrade put the new Windows 7 on the D drive (I don't recall having a choice about where it was saved though). The files now listed under D are (with size in brackets): - PerfLogs (0) - Program Files (390MB) - RECOVERY (1.6MB) - Users (83MB) - Windows (7.3GB) - Windows.old (937MB) So obviously Windows (and to a lesser extent Windows.old) are my problem - Windows.old was created in the upgrade process. In my C drive, I already have a Windows file, so copying the file from D drive to C drive won't work unless I overwrite the current file on the C drive. I don't feel confident that this is the right thing to do though. I think my problems are: 1. Is moving the Windows and Windows.old files from D to C the correct thing to do? 2. If so, what do I do with the Windows file on C already? 3. Is it as simple as copying and pasting the files, and then deleting from D when the paste is successful? Can anyone help. Many thanks.

Hi CH1MP. Its kind of strange how this happened. Yes, the D: drive is probably a recovery partition of some sort. But, I don't understand how you got Windows to install on there AND get it to make a backup of a previous installed version. It appears that you may not have performed an upgrade at all, but instead performed a fresh install. I don't think an upgrade should have created that folder, but I could be wrong. At this point, you have quite a mess. Your best bet is to start over fresh with a new installation of Windows 7. Remove the old partitions from the hard drive, and create one new partition to install WIndows 7 fresh on to. It can be done during the windows setup process. When you finish you will have to install your drivers, and other software that the laptop may have come with. The drivers for Win7 should be able to be downloaded from Dell, and the pre-installed software, if anything important (such as Office) should've come on discs with the computer. You cannot change drive letters after the OS is installed as you suggested.

Hi appleoddity, Thanks for the quick response - you're right, I did a fresh install rather than an upgrade. In Disk Management I can see that I have 3 volumes - OS ©, RECOVERY (D) and an unnamed volume with capacity of only 39MB (Status = Healthy OEM Partition). You mention I need to remove the partitions (is that still correct given that I have this third volume?) so I think removing D and the unnamed volume is what you mean, leaving me with C. Can you confirm that is correct. What then happens to the RECOVERY volume that I need going forward - do I create a partition for that or will Windows do that automatically when it detects I don't have this volume? I am happy removing the two partitions and creating a new partition into which Windows 7 will be installed (and another for RECOVERY if necessary). And what happens to the files I have installed - presumably they will be deleted when I remove the partition? Thanks again.

Yeah, the partition layout sounds correct. But, because you are upgrading to Windows 7, the recovery partition is pretty useless because it contains vista. On second thought though, you will probably want to leave the 39MB partition because I think that is the Dell diagnostic partition you can boot into during the initial POST sequence of the laptop. So, my suggestion is that you delete both C:, and the recovery partition. Windows should create a new, single partition for your C: drive. My preferred method is to delete the C: partition also as I just stated because this helps ensure a "clean" install. When you delete the partitions, all your data will be lost. The recovery partition will not be re-created. It is created by the manufacturer. Unfortunately, you will not have a recovery partition anymore. However, you can use Acronis TrueImage Home to create backups and recovery partitions on your computer. Otherwise, just be prepared to have to go through the same reinstall procedure again if you ever have to. If you do it once, it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to do it again sometime down the road if necessary, but having that backup/recovery partition is convenient. Ofcourse, always keep your important data backed up.