windows 7 system reserved partition not created?

[SimonC]

Reinstalling Windows 7 on a Dell laptop, I had three partitions, system reserved, OS and the recovery partition.
So deleted the os and system reserved partition, I want to keep the recovery partition for now, and I thought the now two unallocated partitions would become one, but they never did.
So I installed Windows and now I have no system reserved partition, instead I have a 40mb unallocated partition.

Did I balls up the reinstall?

 

[SimonC]

I deleted both the os and 40 mb system reserved partition, but they never became one parition, I tried to create one new partition but that didn't work either.
So do I not need the system reserved partition?

 

[SimonC]

At the moment, no I won't be using bitlocker, however it will bug me if its not right.

Was it the recovery partition that is causing the problem?