Windows 7 Windows 7 install went to recovery partition by mistake

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slapshot1959

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New member here,got a W7 install issue.

First time I installed W7 I did a clean install but I guess I chose the wrong drive partition,(it's not obvious what to use!)as it wound up in my recovery D disk. So all 15 GB's are used up.
I did subsequently reinstall,again doing a clean install over Vista, and this time it went in the right drive.
Question is how do I delete those files that went into the recovery disk? I'm not sure what's needed there, but I guess if I delete everything from Saturday's date (when it happened) would that be ok? Just don't want to delete something that's needed.
Any help would be appreciated.
 
Windows 7 creates a 100 mb system reserve partition. I don't know how you got a 15 gb partition unless it was there before install? Windows probably didn't put anyting on the 15 gb partition when you got it set up on the other partition. I think you can just expand your primary partition to take the full drive and the files will have to go.
 
Hi slapshot,

Hope you have recovery/install discs if you ever want to reinstall the previous o/s.

Windows 7 creates a 100 mb system reserve partition
Click to expand...
- it depends.

The 15 gb partition was already there if it is the manufacturer recovery partition.

You should be able to delete it. Then use the unallocated space to create another , or extend the existing partition.

If it is a non standard partition type, you may need to use a 3rd party app. to delete it, or use Diskpart from the cmd line and use the override command.

Partition Wizard ( free) would probably do the job, if that is the case:

Partition Wizard is a Windows based FREE Partition Manager. It works as partition magic and supports Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 server and Windows 7. FREE for Home and Business user.

Hope it helps
 
Neglected to mention that I ran out of space in that partition because I was reinstalling my apps when I was notified by one of the apps that my disk space was critically low.
That's when I realized what had happened.

I don't care about the previous os,(Vista) as it was a fairly new computer with nothing important on it yet.

Yes the 15gb partition was already there (Dell pc).

I will check out Partition wizard program,seems like that would be the solution,however is it possible to delete the programs I installed from the first botched installation? I tried to and can't seem to delete them.
 
Which is the partition marked "System" when you look in Disk Management ? (Partition Wizard calls it Boot).
 
In that case, you will be fine to delete it. Why would you want to delete the programs ? Just delete the partition, or format it.
 
SIW2 said:
In that case, you will be fine to delete it. Why would you want to delete the programs ? Just delete the partition, or format it.
Click to expand...


Ok, just didn't know if it was safe to do so.
So if I format the whole partition,all data there will be wiped but it's nothing to worry about?
Just want to understand properly.
 
Is the recovery partition where the system restore files are stored?
I assume that is what is meant by "recovery".
 
It is called Recovery because it was put there by the manufacturer to recover the originally installed Vista.

Nothing to do with system restore.
 
If you delete the factory recovery partition, the only way to get it back is by using the Recovery DVD's that you should have created when you first installed.

I had to boot to Linux, delete as many files as I could in the system partition and used the recovery disks to get back the factory partition.

That's moot if you don't even plan on a restore.
 

So basically if I never need or want to go back to the factory Vista,I can't?
So why would I?

It's a fairly new pc,and is not my primary one so there was nothing critical or important on it.

Up next is my primary pc,and before I install W 7 on that one,what is the best back up option so I can transfer my files,folders,programs and media to it? I want to do a clean install.

I appreciate everyone's help!
 
I already did one, which what this thread was about.
Now I'm about to do the second one,which has much more valuable data on so I don't want to lose anything.Need good backup and transfer ideas so as to preserve all data.

Going from Vista 32bit to Windows 7,either 32 or 64,clean install.
 
I would start copying all you important files to an external hard drive.

Not sure, because I only do clean" installs, but it may ask you to backup your files on installation

I'd still take the external drive approach

You do realize you will have to re-install all your 3ed party apps.

You
 
It seems a lot of people upgrading or downloading and installing Windows 7 are having this problem with all system files going into the smaller/recovery drive. When you install, it actually seems to highlight that drive, but doesn't tell you what the differences are in where you're putting the install, so one would assume that the middle one highlighted is the natural place for system files to go. But, how can this be? It's only 15GB. So now my Program Files and Window are there. Thankfully since I have started from scratch on a new computer, I have very little in the way of programs. Do I have to start over? Would that be best? I'm frustrated!
 
I only do clean installs unless I'm just curious and will delete it later.

All day long... when this site is up... I read about partition problems... but I still continue to ADVISE people to NOT
partition.

Yes.. a clean install is by far the best. You probably have so many programs on vista that you don't use anyway.. it's a good time to clean up and run a nice fast system. Get an extra hard drive and back up to it when you get your system setup the way you want it.
 

To answer your question,I would start over and make sure you highlight the right partition (C system drive in my case).Obviously you will run out of room extremely quick where you are now so you need to install it on the right partition.

It is a little confusing at first,and thats why I made that mistake, but reinstalling and subsequently installing on another pc I see what I did wrong.
 
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