How to unhide and delete Recovery partition in Acer Aspire 6920

I have Acer Aspire 6920 Notebook which came with vista home premium in 64 bit installed. I have made Recovery disks (3 DVDs) and had resorted to factory defaults several times by using the DVDs and not by Alt+F10 (at that time I did not know about alt+f10). I now have removed the 64- bit vista home premium and have windows-7 Ultimate RTM, Vista Home Premium and XP Pro all in 32 bit in three separate partitions in one single hdd. I have also done BIOS upgrade from 1.06 to 1.14. I have SATA mode set to IDE instead of the default AHCI due to XP not functioning under AHCI interface. My BIOS shows hdd pw frozen by default though I have removed the hdd and set the BIOS to default twice. I find the Vista Home Premium in 64 bit OEM is a real pain since it has a lot of third party softwares – free and sharewares – which I have to uninstall every time (more than 20 of them) and therefore I tried to delete the acers recovery partition which is of 18 GB size and my Notebook with 250 GB hdd shows only 232 GB. However, the partition is hidden and I have tried to unhide and delete the recovery partition with a number of third party partition softwares like Paragon, partedit32, Easeus, Norton, acronis, G-parted, macrium reflect, all with no success! I am a noob but all this I have tried by googling and reading posts in various forums.
Now I request the learned members to give me a solution that will work, in simple procedure explained, to unhide the acer recovery partition and deleting it without disturbing my present OSes installed on the three partitions. Macrium does not show the PQ Service/EISA partition. Thanks in advance.

 

When you insert the Installation Discs(Windows 7 only), it will show totally all PQservices(hidden partitions) inside the AS6920G will appear. Then, DESTROY it!! Muahahahha!
It will be no PQServices Hidden Partitions appear for Installation Discs(Windows Vista).

If you want a more advance and manual method, I can tell you too but it is harder and more bugs if you do it wrongly.

 

I inserted windows 7 RTM disk and booted from it, and in either of the options, viz. installing windows-7 or Repairing the OS, was the hidden partition shown. The Install option only showed three partitions I made totalling to about 232 GB (the hdd is 250 GB). Please let me know the advanced and manual method to unhide the PQ Service and delete the hidden partition so that I can reclaim the 18GB space.
thanks and regards.

 

Sorry, I can't understand such high standard English(I am not english-man).
Did you mean you can't see the PQservice there?
You can't have totally 250GB even your HD is 250GB. I would be only 24XGBs as max the Partition's format(NTFS, FAT32 and so on).
Ok. Now the advance method.

1st, Download Partedit32(PTEDIT32.EXE).
Restart your laptop. Press F2 and enter BIOS setting. Disable D2D Recovery.
Save setting and exit BIOS setting.
Now, in the Windows.
Extract it(ptedit32) out to a folder. Open the PTEDIT32.EXE. A box will come out.
You can see some Partitions(based on the amount of partition you have on your laptop) as appear on the Box.
You can see some numbers on the most left part(label as Type).
Change the number in the "Type" of the Partition that you think is the Hidden Partition. Basically, change the number to 07 will make the Hidden Partition appear.

Warning: I won't hold any responsible for this advance method. Try it at your own risk. As told, it is ADVANCE.

 

Sir, thank you for the fast response. I did as I was advised by you. The first three partitions show the type as "07" while the last and the 4th partition shows the type as "00" followed by '0's in all subsequent columns. The partition information at the bottom left shows as "free space". When I tried to change the type from "00" to "07" (the 4th partition), it asks me "About to make changes to drive 1, are you sure?" But the drive size of drive 1 is shown as 238472 MB (which is equal to 232.88 GB). I was afraid of making the change. Can I do this change of type for the 4th partition. Will it then show the full size of 250 GB. If my three partitions and their contents are gone, it will not matter, I can repartition and reinstall. But will I get the full size of 250 GB. thanks in advance.

 

I think you better backup everything 1st before anything stupid happens.
Moreover, you need a Windows Installation Disc as well. If the Hardisk files got screwed-up, you can still do an Installation of OS. With your backup, it should be a big problem.

If you can't backup your stuffs and don't know how to reformat your laptop,
I would no suggest you to test it out.

 

I have done everything, but no luck. Please suggest something drastic - I am prepared to do it. I do not mind reformatting and installing OSes again - I have done it hundred times and no problem. But I am bent upon removing/deleting the hidden pqservice partition and reclaim the 18GB space. thanks again.

 

Strange. Mine used to be OK with it. I mean even without 3rd Party Software.
Basically, I just boot into Windows 7 Installation, I can delete the partitions I want included the hidden partitions.
Maybe you should try some other 3rd Party Software such as Paragon.

 

Hi, can you not just install win7, then manage all the partitions through disc management 'Right click' computer, 'left click' manage, then click on disk manager. You then should see all the partitions and do with them what you please...
Chris

 

A very good suggestion. I think it will work because after installing Windows 7, the Hidden Partition Acer MBR will be destroy and can be deleted using Disc Management.
But it is strange that he can't see the hidden partitions while Installing Windows 7.

 

Thank you Chris and Darksilver for your help. I have already installed win 7 ult rtm side by side with vista home premium all on ntfs. I could not see the hidden partition from win7. I have tried almost all 3rd party applns., like UBCD, BartPE, partition magic, paragon, Norton, partedit, gparted, ptedit32. Also tried ubuntu live. Downloaded bootIT NG to try. Once I deleted the complete hdd (232GB only) with partition disk doctor and could install the recovery disks (3 DVDs). I could even get alt+f10 working. I think I should try this once again. Has the BIOS setting “hdd password frozen” anything to do with this? I even undid the frozen password by temporarily removing hdd and setting BIOS to default settings, but again the BIOS shows the hdd password frozen setting. I think I should try formatting with fat32 and try once again, because I am told that the pqservice is on fat32. Regards:

 

Hi, there's no need to use fat32, plus it won't be able to see all of the hard drive space anyway....
Chris

 

sorry if this is obvious but, my "500GB" hard disk shows as 465GB and my "320GB" is only 298GB. thats how disk sizes are quoted. maybe your hidden partition is not really there.
from the web:
500GB as it is on the package is 500,000,000,000 Bytes. Since a kilobyte is 1024 bytes and a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes and a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes, the calculation doesn't come out as 500 GBs of space. It's basically a marketing scheme to make you think you're getting more space than you are, all hard drives are sold that way. It's 500 billion bytes and not 500 GBs, even though that's what it says. 465 GBs of space is all there really is. If you divide 500,000,000,000 by 1024, then by 1024, then by 1024 again, you get the actual space your computer will use, which comes out to 465.66 GB.

 

Agreed. I have calculate the total size by addition my C and D and PQService as well as XP(Arcade Deluxe MBR). It is 298GB(320GB). The space is reduced due to the FORMAT of the Partitions.
A pure unformated Hardisk size should be almost the same as it stated.
However, after format it. It's size will be reduced.
Basically, we used NTFS format. NTFS allows large files transferring and modifying and much more stable. Yet, it reduced the Hardisk size slightly more than FAT or FAT32.

The larger the Size, the larger the space get reduced.
It follow the percentage.
320GB should reduced to 298GB(confirmed I checked it myself manually and using Intel Disk Management).
While 500GB should reduced to 465.7GB.
Afterall, I think your 18GB is reduced by the format instead of the PQService.

 

Thanks to Gazzacbr and Darksilver for correctly clarifying the issue. I look foolish now for having made a big issue of this small thing! The 250GB if taken as 250000000000 (250 followed by nine zeros) bits and then divided by 1024 thrice to arrive at Gigabytes, it comes to exactly 232.83 GBs which is what is precisely shown by my Disk Management. Gazzacbr’s 500GB disk is showing 465.66GB and on this basis, my 250GB hdd showing 232.83GB is perfectly in order. Once again thank you for putting things in proper perspective and laying the matter to rest. I am now relieved. Regards.

 

good that one got resolved. the hidden partition was the phantom partition.
it is still a bummer when you get your nice new 500GB disk, install it and only see 465GB free

 

No actually it is due to manufacturing and computer definition of bytes
1KB according to disk manufacturer is 1000bytes
1KB according to software developer is 1024bytes
Therefore you can conclude that it will become smaller in actual software usage.
This is the biggest factor of size decrease the partition creation is another contributing factor.