Question about deleting Dell Restore Partition

I'd like to remove this partition and gain back the harddrive space it is taking up. But before I actually do it, I want to make sure it will be safe/easy.

Is it as simple as booting up, selecting the one partition, and deleting it? Will deleting this one partition affect anything else? Is windows restore dependent at all on this partition?

Just wondering about these things before I screwed up my comp, lol. Thanks for any help.

EDIT: another quick question that is unrelated, but I noticed that when I first got my inspiron, whenever I hit the volume buttons a small display would pop up and show a volume level bar. This was very useful for me to see how high or low the volume was without having to go into the tray manually. After installing new drivers for my nvidia geforce go 7900gs, I noticed this feature was gone, and even after restoring dell default drivers, it is still absent. Anyone know how to turn this on/ recover it?

 

No, XP restore is not dependent on your Dell restore partition. XP restore will turn your laptop back to a certain point in time, where as Dell restore will return your laptop back to factory condition (first day you received it). There is no harm in deleting it. Most users that have the XP disc usually do delete it because the restore partition will no longer work if you reformat as well as most users would rather format than have to use the restore partition.

You can uninstall the Dell restore software (under add/remove programs), and this should delete that partition and add it in with your XP Partition.

You can also just format it and use it as a spare partition if you like. You can do this in the Control Panel under Administrative --> disk management.

There is also a third option that you can do while you are formatting. When you are in the XP format, you have the option to delete/create partitions if you like.

Second part of your question, you need to install or turn on Dell's Quickset. It has the pop up boxes. I think MCE also has its own pop up boxes, but i'm not sure where that would be located.

 

I had the same question, so, I tried to remove the dell restore software (under add/remove programs), and there is an entry for the software but no button or anything to change or remove it. I was also wondering how this would just add it to my xp partition? I don't know alot about partitions but from everything ive seen that shouldn't just add it to your xp partition.

 

hth

Mark

 

I'm curious about this as well.... Anyone know what the Dell Restore software is all about???

Mark

 

I had a user contact me on MSN, and that is the way they did it. They went to add/remove, and uninstalled Dell Restore software. When it uninstalled the software, it added it in to the XP partition. This just happen in the last week and was a brand new system with the spare partition.

You might check to see if there is an uninstaller.

 

Hmmm... but was that wrt the 'standard' Dell Restore partition or the Norton Ghost 10 trial software with the 'extra' partition???

Mark

 

He said it was the Restore partition. We were talking about just reformatting it, and he decided to uninstall the restore partition instead. I'm trying to find out some info about it on dell, but so far no luck.