reinstalling vista, need help figuring out hard drive partitions

This describes how I wound up in my current situation, if you dont have time to read this, you could still help me by skipping down to the bottom and answering my questions.

I got my Inspiron 1520 about two weeks ago, and since then Ive tested out three different antivirus programs and installed some other programs. I wanted to use the Dell PC Restore feature to restore it to it's initial state. I chose this over just using microsoft's system restore because I think It will save the programs that I installed on the hard drive incase I ever want to undo the restore. I bought some OCZ ram to upgrade to 2Gb, and put that in before I attempted the PC restore. The ram speeds appeared correctly in the bios, and I ran Memtest v3.3 and that had no errors. Then I checked the ram in Sandra, and again it appeared correct. After that I probably shut down and restarted one more time with the new ram, it seemed to work fine. Next I shut down and tried to use the Dell PC restore, however, it tried at least 15 times and the keys just didn't bring anything up. So I googled it and saw that changes in the MBR can prevent PC Restore from working. Unfortuantely it doesnt look like there are any fix disks for vista. So after doing that I thought that maybe if I did a microsoft system restore, I could undo the changes that kept it from working. So I did a system restore back to just after the first two updates installed on the computer (the first two listings). Well, Ive done a system restore before, and I think it took 10 minutes or less. This time it took about 45 minutes. Well, after this microsoft restore, PC restore still didnt come up. So I tried restoring all the way back to even before the first two updates. This worked, but it probably took an hour to do this. It did this and restarted and I had to put my name and my password in again. Well I shut it down and tried the PC restore keys again, it still didnt work, but this time it blue screened. The error was "CLFS.SYS PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA." Since then, I havent been able to get it to boot up. It blue screens every time. I thought it could be the ram, so I ran memtest again. Again it came up with no errors. Then I tried every option on the f8 advanced startup menu, and none of them worked. It would go into startup repair, but it was unable to fix the problem. Sometimes the Repair Your Computer option on the f8 menu would just blue screen, but other times it would actually come up. On that menu I tried to undo the microsoft system restore, but it wouldnt let me do that. The Dell PC restore option was also there and that didnt work either (FYI a much easier way to find it). I cant get the menu to come up now, (keep blue screening), but anything else that was applicable I tried. I think microsoft diagnostics was also on that menu, and I did a microsoft memory test, and it again had no errors. I was also unable to boot from safe mode. Next I went to the f12 menu and selected diagnostics. I think these are the bios diagnostics. It did some tests then asked me if I wanted it to spend an additional half hour checking the memory. I skipped this because I didnt think it was necessary after the last two tests. After clicking no to that it took me into dell diagnostics. In dell diagnostics I ran an extended system test, and a series of tests specific to blue screening. At this point I thought that the hard drive might be bad since it had taken so long during the microsoft system restores. But I did all the blue screen tests, and all the hard drive tests and everything checked out fine.

Sorry to make you read all of that, but I thought someone might catch something that I missed. Could it still be that ram? Since it checked out on the microsoft test and the dell diagnostics test I would assume that it is compatible with the computer. I would rather not swap the ram out because I dont want to take the keyboard out again, but I will do it if necessary.

I did a one time boot on my vista restore CD and that worked correctly.

Questions for people who didn't want to read the essay above:

So as far as I know, my only option is to reformat and reinstall vista, which I really dont have a problem with, but I want to keep media direct and Dell's diagnostic software. Since PC restore doesnt work anyway, I want to merge that partition with the C drive, can you do this when you reinstall vista? What partition is media direct installed on? I looked at some other threads and didnt find a clear answer, but I think it may be on the utility partition with the diagnostics software. If so, I think I could just not touch that partition when I reformat with vista, correct? Or is there any way to reinstall the utility partition if it is deleted? Im not sure if media direct is working correctly. I tried it a few hours ago and it worked, but last night, it wouldnt work, strangely, it went into the screen that said windows didnt boot properly last time, would you like to run a startup repair or to start up normally. But now it works, so maybe it just had something to do with having trouble acquiring the files out of the windows partition. If media direct is installed in the windows partition, would I be able to reformat that partition, with the vista disk, but not install vista, so that I could install media direct first?

Also, Im wondering if I should create one partition for vista and programs and another for data. I read somewhere that this can be a pain because programs often default to saving data on the partition that they are installed on. Also, how would I estimate how much space to leave for the vista and programs partition? I dont know what programs I will install in the future.

Thanks!!!

 

What a read.....Take heed of my Clean Install article below and enjoy. Dont forget to post how you made out!!!

 

Thanks for reading. One question though, does the media direct partition include the Dell diagnostics software? I thought I read somewhere that dell computers have 3 partitions, a 50mb utility partition, the C drive, and the PC restore partition. Mabey that is pre-media direct? Or are there four partitions?

I'd really like to keep dell diagnostics because it was a major help since I had no other way of knowing if there was a hardware problem with my computer.

If you dont know could you or someone else who has done a clean install do me a favor and check. All you do is click f12 for a one time boot and there is a diagnostics option at the bottom of the screen. you boot into that and first you have to run the bios diagnostics for a few minutes, then it asks you if you want do a full memory check, say no to that and it will automatically take you into dell diagnostics if you have them.

 

If, like I suspect, it is the same as with the Vostro, there are four partitons, in this order:
1. 140-150 MB Dell boot/diagnostic partition
2. 10 GB Recovery partition (reads ad D:\)
3. xxx GB OS partition (reads as C:\) - gets booted up by the power button.
4. 2.5 GB Mediadirect partions - gets booted up by the mediadirect button.

I'd rather let the first partition untouched.

 

There are actually four partitions in your dell system by default. But in vista, you can create another partition within windows if you still have a lot of free space in drive c:

Check this out:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Wi...d35e-efdf-406c-a049-0860180129a71033.mspx#EFB

This is very useful if you need to backup data or store files before doing a clean install and you don't have an external backup drive.

 

your biggest problem is windows vista fix that and the rest will fall in to place