Vostro 1400/1500 partitions delete/create!!!

Has anyone mess with the default configurations...
Vista allows a max of 4 partitions, so in order for me to create one I need to delete one.
Has anyone figure out what the 2.50GB partition is? or the 71mb partition (can't delete this though)?

I dont want to mess w/ the recovery partition. I want to deleted the 2.5gb partition and create a new partition by shrinking the 80GB Vista partion

 

You can have more partitions, but they can only be logical. First you need to change one of the partitions over to extended. I doubt this can be done from where you are now though.

This being my first laptop, I have not had to deal with only having one hard drive, so I have never had the problem you are facing here.

Sorry I can't help any more, but maybe this will trigger someone else's brain into remembering another tidbit that will help more.

 

Thanks for the reply, i deleted the 2.5gb and shrinked the VISTA partition... then created a 25gb partition.

 

I believe one of the 2.5GB and 71MB partitions is the Dell Diagnostic partition and the other is Media Direct; I'm not totally sure, I wiped my drive as soon as I got my machine. If you do a clean install you can delete these.

 

Just wondering...
The MediaDirect partition, AFAIK and if I am not mistaken, is a partition with a special ubuntu version that loads when pressing the 'alternate power up button' named "media direct".
I've read that it has a "DE" id so to be kept hidden to other OSes.
Wouldn't it be nice to extend that partition, and then installing a full fledged Ubuntu distro on it and having the media direct button as a "Linux startup button"?

Anyone ever cared to try that out?
After all, if it loads Ubuntu with media direct, it can be done.

As a newbie at my first laptop (still in prebuild :-( ) I wouldn't try something this extreme before my warranty has expired. But some of you gurus...

 

Sorry about the double post. I must have clicked twice the send button.

 

I messed with the Media Direct button for a few minutes before I deleted the partition. Media Direct seems to run on Windows PE that is based on Windows XP (or some other modified version of xp).

Dell may have some other Media Direct solution for their PC's that come with Linux, but mine has Vista on it and the Media Direct partition definitely doesn't contain Linux. Also, the system appears to boot a different bios (or at least one that uses a different splash screen) when the Media Direct button is pressed.

I've been messing with this laptop quite a bit, but I haven't gotten around to trying to figure out how the system determines where to find the Media Direct partition. It might just search for any type of partition with type DE and attempt to boot it, or it might attempt to boot the 4th primary partition if it exists.

 

Quite possibile, or perhaps the reviewer that wrote Media Direct was based on Ubuntu was wrong. Anyway, it's immaterial.

Thanks for your answer.
Have a look at this thread, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=150216&page=3