Strange Partitioning on new Laptop

sWiZzLe

sWiZzLe

sWiZzLe

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I just bought an Acer Aspire 5050. It came with Vista Basic but i would like to set up a dual boot with it and XP as i have tried to install certain software and have come close on several occasions to making it unbootable.

So when I opened up Disk Management to see how the disk is partitioned I came across something wierd - wierd to me anyway:

Its partitioned into 3, the second is Vista, the 3rd is Data but the first is hidden:

It's 7.8gb and says EISA Configuration.

What is this? Do i need it? Is it something to do with Vista? :confused:

Thanks
 
most likely a recovery partition, usually hidden/protected by the bios as in the case of my t60.

first thing i did was unprotect mine and remove it :)
 
skanky said:
most likely a recovery partition, usually hidden/protected by the bios as in the case of my t60.

first thing i did was unprotect mine and remove it :)
Click to expand...

As Skanky said, it's most likely a recovery partition. Did your PC come with a standard XP disk?
 
No, strangely it didn't come with any disks. I had to make my own recovery dvd after it had unpacked everything. Is that normal :rolleyes:

Maybe i should back up this partition to my desktop or take a look at it in PM

It came with Vista, i have XP Pro somewhere.
 
the partition is a poor mans recovery disk as supplied by OEMs (to save costs i guess?).

totally useless if your hdd goes kaput. its not needed tbh.
 
I only noticed this the other day on my Sony, XP never showed it, so I only knew it was there when i installed Vista.

But I have no way of removing it :( Right click does nothing, and I cant see anything in the bios.
 
This is a normal drive config for Acer and a few other laptop makers, the hidden partition contains the recovery files, so they dont have to supply you with a set of disks.

The disk you created will most likly contain a VISTA.WIM and a HDDRE.WIM file rather than actual windows files, to extract the files you need imageX, this is part of MS BDD2007. However chances are, this only contains a copy of the installed files which will not work on the drive if you re-partition it, trust me, i tried with my laptop (philips) the image was created from your current partition setup and thus the registry will be invalid on the install if it does not match the same partition info on your drive.

To dual boot you will need to delete all partitions and then re partition, install XP on the first partition then install Vista on the second, to do this though, you will need a copy of Vista suitable for your license key !
 
Hmm,

When i turned on the laptop it was at the 'Windows is starting for the first time' bit. After setting it all up it went through this Acer eManagement thing, not sure what it was installing but it took ages. When it finished it asked me to make this 'Factory Default' disk, so i made 2 :p It took up about 3gb

If install XP, then use this DVD, will that install Vista?

I'll try to boot it when acronis finishes backing up Vista
 
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