Vostro 1700 Hidden partitions

prescott28 · 11 Jun 2008 at 18:45

I got my Vostro this week from Dell outlet and it is very good. It cam with 4BG memory and a very good screen and a 320GB drive. However, with the recovery partition and a logical drive D: containing 10GB of recovery files I fell I have lost quite a bit of space.

So, anyone know if these bits on my hard drive are needed as I have various recovery DVDs including Vista and the drivers. Also, if the DVDs I have are enough to reinstall everything, how do I remove the hidden partitions and reformat?

Finally, a phone call to Dell about the possibility of 64 bit Vista told me that Microsoft is working on a patch to 32 bit Windows to allow 4GB access (apart from the various ROMs) - at present I can only see 3.5GB. Anyone know anything about this?

Thanks for any help.

minging · 11 Jun 2008 at 21:39

Had my 1700 3 wks now and finally got round to reinstalling vista , which is a cinch.
There is loads of dell rubbish on there you dont need or want , think i reduced processes by about 15 or so.
Just stick in your vista install disk and remove all the partitions , there were 3 on mine , 10gig recovery , 2.5gig media and the main partition.
Then create what partition sizes you wish and install away, didnt even ask me for a key
Seems oem dell install disks check you have a dell mobo and use a generic key ( you can change it afterwards if you want )
When vista has installed then install your drivers from the driver disk ( or download them beforehand )
I nuked the media application , wasnt going to use it , but if you want to keep it you have to stick that on before vista i believe.
Well worth the 30-40 mins it took me , and i recommend you grab some modified gfx drivers from laptopvideo2go.

edit

webcam software is on another disk , but you would have figd that out

prescott28 · 11 Jun 2008 at 22:20

Thanks for that, Minging. I'm off to see relatives and things next week so I'll get the job done when we get back. I didn't know whether there was anything useful in the hidden partitions which one cannot easily access.

Seems like a great machine though.

Van Diemen · 11 Jun 2008 at 22:55

prescott28 said:
Finally, a phone call to Dell about the possibility of 64 bit Vista told me that Microsoft is working on a patch to 32 bit Windows to allow 4GB access (apart from the various ROMs) - at present I can only see 3.5GB. Anyone know anything about this?

Thanks for any help.

Balls to that, the patch will only be able to show 4GB of installed ram in the system display, but will only use the 3.5 you are currently seeing. 32bit systems can only address 4GB of RAM in total, GPU, PCI would take some of these addresses up & the rest will be allocated to the system RAM. No software patch can fix this.