Delete vista partitions, format hard drive, reinstall Vista onto ONE c: partition using only Acer recovery disks?

Background:

A few days ago i bought an Acer 7730 laptop with Windows Vista pre-installed and no disks. After initial hesitation i have decided to keep vista and not downgrade to XP. After all there will be more service packs and tweaking should speed it up lots anyway.

However, i really want to get rid of the three partitions on the hard drive. There is only one physical hard drive but there are three partitions; a hidden 10GB one (EISA configuration) which from what i have gathered is now obsolete, a C: partition 111.44GB and a D: partition 111.44GB. There is no need to split a drive into several partitions now that we have the NTFS file system (unless you are using multiple operating systems of course - but i am not) so this is really annoying me.

I have made the 2 recovery DVD and the 1 applications/drivers DVD. I have an old WinXP disk that i can use to format the laptop if required.

Question:

Using the recovery disks (which i'm assuming contain a copy of my bought OEM Vista that was pre-installed on the laptop), can i delete the partitions, format the hard drive and install Vista onto a single c: partition?

I've done this exact process before with WinXP hundreds of times but i'm not sure whether i can do the same for Vista with just the 3 DVD mentioned...

 

Steps:

- Use something like Acronis Disk Director and remove all partitions except C:/, then extend C:/ to fill entire hard drive.
- Insert recovery disc(s) and reboot
- Install Vista

 

Thanks alot for the swift reply.

Will the recovery disks not just automatically restore everything back to the factory settings - which means that they'd put the partitions back on?

If my entire hard drive completely failed and i installed a new blank one into my Acer 7730, would i be able to install Vista from the recovery DVD?

 

To delete any hidden EISA system partition do this,

from start, go to run,

command prompt

type= diskpart
type= rescan
type= list disk
type= select disk (x) the disk with partition on
type= list partition
type= select partition (x) the partition you want to delete
type= delete partition override

good luck, Terry.

 

personally I would use Ubuntu 8.10 to repartition. Just boot into live mode and use Gparted to do what delete the extra partitions and extend the OS partition. If you use Gparted from Ubuntu, you won't have to reinstall windows.



If you have Vista Ultimate (I think business will do this too):
Option B
Delete the non-OS partitions using Disk Management. Then get Vista exactly how you want it with programs and settings and such and then make a "System Image" of the only remaining partition that holds windows. Next use Gparted in Ubuntu 8.10 to create a Partition Table on the drive to remove all the data.

then boot from any vista ultimate install disk, choose "Repair My computer" and choose the restore option and restore the disk back making sure to only choose drive C:



Download the Ubuntu 8.10 .iso here.
To burn the .iso to a disk use the free open source software InfraRecoder


Although, with option B it may actually recreate the empty partitions. I don't have a machine to test out Option B, or else I would to make sure everthing works out. but if it works, you shouldn't have worry about loosing all your data acidently during all the re-partioning and disk work.

 

The 10gb EISA partition is your recovery partition. If you ever want to perform a disk 2 disk recovery, which is faster then using your recovery disc, don't delete that partition. If you don't care, then go ahead and do what ever you want.