Installation :: Safe To Delete DELL Created Partitions When Upgrading OS
Jan 11, 2016
My DELL Latitude laptop came with Windows 8.1 Pro x64 on it. I decided that I want to upgrade it to Windows 10 Pro x64.Before I did anything I used DELL Backup and Recovery to create a flash drive so I can always restore the PC back to factory if anything goes wrong during the upgrade process.
After creating the recovery media I used the Windows 10 upgrade wizard to upgrade to Windows 10 carrying over all of my existing files. I primarily did this so my Windows 8.1 Product Key which is injected into the motherboard would officially become a Windows 10 Product Key.Now I would like to do a 100% clean install of Windows 10 through a bootable Windows 10 USB flash drive that I just got done creating but have a few questions:I booted from the flash drive and went to Custom (Advanced) install and I am currently viewing all of the partitions:
Which of these are DELL related and which of these are just the additional partitions Windows automatically installs?Can I just delete them all and fresh install Windows 10 on Unpartitioned space?Is there any that are non operating system related and might be worth keeping like the DIAGS one?Will my DELL Backup and Recovery media rely on any of these if I delete them and then try to use it later on?Is there any use for any single one these anymore now that I have backup recovery media and will be going to Windows 10?
100MB (created from Windows 7, which I knew was needed for booting)
C Partition (Windows instllation)
450MB (created after upgrade)
So, do I still need the 100MB? and what is this new 450MB used for? Disk Management says that is empty. I don't want to delete anything for risk of making my system unbootable.
As the title say, is there any workaround to avoid creating 4 different partitions during a clean install of Windows 10?
Here is a sample of what I mean:
[URL] ....
I think one is necessary and unavoidable (the MSR one), but the other ones should be used for optional services that you may not require, like restore etc.
I couldn't find a work around yesterday and in the end I gave up and accepted those 4 partitions...
I clean installed Win 10 RTM version on my laptop a few weeks ago. I have a basic GPT setup.
Installation went fine, however the installer created a 'Recovery' drive (D with a size of 600 MB (262 MB free) & a 'Local Disk' drive (E with a size of 451 MB (128 MB free).
I am stumped as to why it assigned letters to them. If you see the attachment of a snapshot of Partition Wizard, you will be able to see the setup.
My question, besides why the assigned letters is the where the status is listed as 'None'. Is it safe to delete these?? I am assuming that the only partitions i need to keep are the 'ESP', which is 'Active & Boot' - so it is needed to be able to boot into Windows. How about the one listed as 'Other' - the capacity is 128 MB & all 128 MB are used - do i save this one as well?
I really wanted a less cluttered setup - so when all these partitions were created, particularly 'D' & 'E', i was perplexed as to why they were created.
Currently, I have dual boot Win7 and Win10. And the only reason I have Win7 is because the drivers for a printer were not updated to Win10. Now recently HP did just that, and I no longer need Win7.
The way I have it set up is that I have Win7 on one partition, Win10 on another (100GB each) and the rest is Storage. Is it safe to simply remove and format the partition that has Win7 on it ?
the homegroup showing was created on an old computer no longer around. After the recent large Win 10 update my two computers cannot see each other. I have a Netgear router an Net Genie can see the the computers on ethernet network but shows them as unavailable. My internet connection is working on both computers.
I have been trying out virtual box and running Linux distros. The computer started malfunctioning after updating a Linux distro running in virtual box needing to do a factory reset to my computer but all good now.
I plan to dual my computer with Linux and Windows 10 but when checking in Disk Management I noticed I have 6 partitions on the hard drive.
My question is could I delete the 490mb 45 mb 7.92gb partitions ready before I install a Linux distro.
I want to upgrade to Windows 10, and unfortunatly, the only way for me to do so is by doing a fresh installations and deleting everything, wich I don't want to. I want to back-up my current data on a hard drive partition, if I do a fresh installation of Windows 10, will it delete my partition alongside my data inside it?
talking about the windows.old file that was created after the not so long ago major update...just realized my HDD is starting to take a tanking and that folder is taking up a good chunk of space! hence why im wondering if it should be okey to remove or not.
Is there a way to boot into Win 10 in a safe mode? The reason I ask is I am having trouble in normal mode trying to get rid of my win.old file. It will let me delete some of it but not all. So maybe in safe mode I can delete it all or am I missing something here?
I made a 100gb partition because I was going to try and install Windows 7 and have it as a 2nd OS along side Windows 10, but about half way through the computer restarted and I can't boot into Windows Setup. That's fine, I changed the default OS and made Windows 10 be chosen instantly on startup. Although in disk management the (Windows 10) Windows C: partition says Boot, I'm not really sure whether or not it's safe to delete the Windows 7 partition.
I have a Dell 11 venue Pro (7140) tablet and I upgraded to windows 10. My tablet comes with 128Gb and I found out that I have many recovery partition. I am not sure which one I can remove it using DISKPART. Below is what I seen on the Disk Management Screen. Only C drive has volume label of C.
O/S-windows10 v1511 ... following the update to version 1511,I discovered .mui files and L10n files(.dlls) in my program folder. Can these files be deleted without causing problems or do they have to be transferred to the system32 folder ?
Since I upgrade to Windows 10 (coming from 8.1) in my friend's Dell Optiplex 3011 All-In-One computer, with built-in speakers, the audio has been disabled, and I see the Windows speaker icon is with an "x". In Windows 8.1, the audio was working normally, so it's not a hardware issue.
However, if I plug in an earphone, the audio output is enabled and the Windows speaker icon changes to normal one. I installed the latest version of Realtek HD Audio driver (R2.79), and restarted, but the audio continues disabled unless an earphone is connected.
I first upgraded to Windows 10 and installed the Realtek audio drivers. Then, I performed did a clean install and installed the Realtek audio driver again, but audio is still disabled. When I open the Realtek Audio Manager in Control Panel, only the microphone tab appears. When I plug an earphone, the speaker/earphone tab is visible as it should be, disappearing after I unplug it.
I reinstalled Windows 8.1 in his system hoping to have audio working again, but the problem persists. I've tried installing the Realtek HD Audio driver from Dell supporte page for my product (entering the service tag to be 100% sure), but no luck. Windows troubleshooting is useless as usual, only asking me to plug in an earphone, like I didn't know it. I even upgraded Dell BIOS/UEFI firmware to latest version (A07), but it didn't fix anything.
Info: System: Dell Optiplex 3011 All-in-One OS: Windows 10 Home Single Language Realtek version: R.279
I ran the upgrade and now have a Windows.old folder taking up 31GBs. If you are not planning on rolling back to 8.1, you can remove this folder following these steps: Windows.old Folder - Delete in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums
When using the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft what is the size of the ISO that is created for X64 Windows Pro? The one I created is smaller than one I created from the install.esd file. The size I see is 3.10 GB (3,333,357,568 bytes). Can that be right?
I'm wanting to reinstall Windows 10 on my SSD. Before I do I'll unplug the additional drives I have inside my PC for storage (E: onwards), to isolate the SSD. However, C: (disk1 in the screenshot below) has several partitions and unlabelled volumes that I'm guessing Windows created. Do I remove all of them during the install process?
I purchased a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 with a 120GB SSD and a 1TB hard disk. I have the OS on the SSD (C:) together with the programs. So far I have installed Office 365 and little else. I have moved the data directories from C:Users to the D: drive.
The laptop came with no CDs or OS disks and Dell tell me none are available so I have created a recovery USB disk. At the end of that process it informed me that I could now delete any recovery partitions on the boot drive to create extra disk space. On trying this the option failed "Unable to delete partition". The reason for doing this is to recover the drive space used by 3 of the 5 partitions on the SSD. They take up over 32GB of the 120GB I bought. I've never needed to use a recovery partition and would have no issue with having to do a full install from CD or USB in future.
Disk Management does not have a "Delete partition" option for any of the SSD partitions. Would a re-install from the recovery USB stick allow me to delete all partitions on the SSD before re-installing or would they just get created again?
I have windows 10 build 1511 on a USB stick made by windows media creation tool now when install windows the drive has zero partitions.
When i install the copy from the USB stick i end up with 3 partitions one is 450MB (recovery partition) and another partition at 100MB called (EFI System partition) and last partition is windows 10.
Now if i delete all the partitions and install windows 10 from the USB drive again i get two partitions one at 500MB called (System Reserved) and the windows 10 partition.
Why if i install windows 10 multiple times i get different partitions being made?
I would like it to only make the two partitions every time.
I have attached an image of my Disk Management screen. Disk 0 doesn't look right to me. Is there a problem here? if there is, how do I correct this? I am running W10 and the C drive is a Samsung SSD drive.
My single ssd has the partitions shown in the attached file. This notebook was converted to win 10 from 8.1. I want to merge C: and D: into one volume. However to do that it appears that I need to have them adjacent. I tried to move the two offending small partitions but can't. Better yet I would feel better about just deleting them . Is there a way to tell what is in them? I don't care about recovering to win 8.1.
I've upgraded from windows 8.1 with uefi bios, so basically now i can do clean install 10 without product key? But the real question is: My pc have 8 partitions, the primary one, 5 of recovery, 1 oem and 1 efi. Can i delete all partitions and create only one?
I have been able to "successfully" boot the CD Drive into UEFI mode to install Windows 10 onto my new 4TB SSHD, but I run into the error were it stats that the partitions are not in the recommended order, when the ONLY partitions on the disk are the primary and the "protective MBR" before it at slot 0. Now, when I am in windows for the first time everything seems fine, but as soon as I restart after doing basic setup, I run into an issue where I cannot browse any partitions (I try to open "This PC", but it acts like it is indexing indefinitely and I never see the drive listing).
It looks like Windows 10 may not be appropriately setting the order for the partitions. the moment I left my original installation on my 1TB HHD intact, so that I can still have an operating PC, and find out some info on this.
I have upgraded my Windows 8.1 system to Windows 10 through the Windows update app and have created an installation media USB stick. I want to clean install, something I am very familiar with, but not since the new uefi, gpt, legacy etc. that I'm not familiar with. If I do a clean install and delete the entire disk, Windows will create the partitions and install the necessary "data" to run the computer correctly? I don't need to save the data on the hidden partitions that are present now?
