It was once one side of the dual boot system.
So it's a system disk... please post a screenshot of your disk manager showing this disk and the C drive.
You can format the first recovery disk using the "diskpart" tool however the C and D will not allow wiping because C is your boot drive and D is the system... today you would expect to see an efi system partition at the front to avoid this type of lock but I assume D (XP) was the first drive sometime in the past?
3 work-arounds;
1. Use a solid image tool like Acronis to make a bootable backup of the C drive then insert a new blank hdd and get Acronis to transfer just the C drive onto it... this will make the new C drive also be your system disk. OR
2. Format/ wipe the hdd and start again with a new fresh copy of Windows or
3. Insert a new blank hdd, temp remove the old one so only this new blank one is in the system and install a fresh Windows onto it... this is the best/ safest option if you want to go over to wx... in that senario, it's what I recommend you do.
P.s I see you have the WX tool installed on that system... I expect the upgrade will fail because of this non-standard set up will block the default backup and recovery part of the auto-install and advise you to make whatever backups before trying it.
Won't effect the liklyhood of wx upgrade working but sure go ahead.What if I leave the XP D: drive, but just reduce its size to a minimum?
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg309169.aspxHow can I perform that task?
So at some stage you want to go back to using xp on this machine?... The problem is that system file but yes, you could put XP back on if thats what you want to do.That way, I will not have to worry about loosing drivers or other abilities that the Sony computer originally had.
Thanks for your expertise and patience in dealing with someone less than computer savvy. I don't foresee installing XP again on this computer; however, I was wondering why the partition is so large. It only has about 1.5g worth of information, buy will only shrink to 29g.....is this normal?Won't effect the liklyhood of wx upgrade working but sure go ahead.
Easily Shrink a Volume on a Windows 7 Disk
So at some stage you want to go back to using xp on this machine?... The problem is that system file but yes, you could put XP back on if thats what you want to do.
It only has about 1.5g worth of information
will only shrink to 29g.....is this normal?
I don't foresee installing XP again