Delete Acer 7720 Hidden Partition on XP

Guys, I discovered this great forum after I made a mess.

I hace my ntb with Vista and installed XP only deleting Vista restoring zone. Then (obviously) I found out the hidden partition from Acer and now I wanna delete it.

Could you tell me a safe way of deleting this hidden partition without corrupting the whole system? Do you have any tutorial (I cannot find anything specific at the time).

Sorry, I'm a rookie on ntb's.....

Regards, George

 

try RIGHT CLICKING MY COMPUTER,,,
then CLICK MANAGE
then CLICK DISK MANAGMENT..

you should see a partition labeled PQSERVICE (it should be about 10g) that is the partition you want to delete.... and DISK MANAGMENT will allow you to delete it,,, but you cannot expand the existing C DRIVE to use that extra 10 gigs using diskmanagment,,, you need a 3rd party app like PARTITION MAGIC

 

Thanks bigozone, will try when back home (think it's be usefull to make restore disks, I use Acronis 11?). Also will try upgrading BIOS to 1.43, to avoid cold boot issue.
Regards, George (Argentina)

 

Acronis = Win

Personally if it was me I would wipe the ENTIRE drive and install what ever OS you want (image it first of course). Then once you have windows + drivers + updates installed image it again Have a before and after, that way you are set if you decide to ever sell the pc again.

-=ssx=-

 

Thanks SSX4Life, just one question. So, the steps should be (with Acronis):
1) I make an image only of C: (only, excluding hidden zone)
2) Format the entire disk (deleting from XP Boot CD the hidden partition, making only one partition.
3) Install XP (with SATA drivers, made by Nlite)
4) Reinstall Acronis, with secure zone and boot F11 option
5) Reinstall the image from DL CD.
Is this correct?
Thanks in advance! George

 

That is an option, but I'd do it a bit different.

1) Make a 1:1 image of the ENTIRE drive, including all partitions
2) Format the entire disk and all partitions (use a tool like http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/)
3) Install XP (with SATA drivers and nlite)
4) Install all hardware drivers and patch the OS
5) Make a 1:1 image of the drive again after you are fully patched
6) Install apps / etc. and make a 3rd image from the second (make a incremental for image #2)

This way you have the ability to restore to three points at any given time. Just my .02 cents but yes your method will work just as well.

 

Let's pray to the Lord!!! Thanks for your assistance!!!