trouble deleting partition

[gregf]

For some reason one of my XP PCs seems to have a second partition on
it's one and only drive. When I look in Computer Management/Disk
management, it shows both C and D drives, but a right click menu shows
on drive C (NTFS) delete partition greyed out, and on drive D (FAT32)
delete logical drive also greyed out. I want there to be only one
drive, one partition, drive C.
I'm not sure what to do at this point.

 

[Jason Haynes]

This is probably a recovery partition placed there by the manufacturer used
to restore the machine to the state it was in when you purchased it. Many
manufacturers have turned to this technique instead of shipping oem XP cd's
or even recovery media.

 

[gregf]

So there's no way to get rid or it/merge it back into the C drive? It's
a 14.5 GB drive with 96% space free. It seems like a waste.

 

[Ted Zieglar]

If you have installation CDs for Windows and all the other software that
shipped with your computer, and you feel comfortable with installing
software, you can do without the recovery partition. However, I would check
with the manufacturer before deleting anything, since newer computers may
not function correctly if the recovery partition is disturbed.

 

[neil]

You would need a program like partition magic to merge the partitions. If
you have any programs installed on the "D:" drive then you will need to
reinstall them after the merge to get them to work correctly. The only other
option would be to format the whole hard drive to one partition and start
again. Unless the 14.5GB is from the manufacturers partition but that seems
a bit excessive to me.

Neil

 

[Al Romanosky]

First - Delete not available on the "right click" sub-menu of the "C" drive
is the default behavior - for obvious reasons -it contains the
Active/System/Primary partition. Do not quote me on this, but I imagine it
is the same reason delete is not available for the "D" partition. Second -
If this is a new computer and no changes, additions and so forth, were
made - it is possible "D" contains the restoration files. You have not
stated what files occupy the "D" drive. I am sure that a third party
partition management program, such as Partition Magic, will allow merging
the partitions without loss of applications or data.

 

[gregf]

According to File Explorer, drive D is empty. It's an older PC, 4-5
years. I think someone else messed with it for a while, may have had
some sort of fancy partition software on it for reasons I don't know.
I'm sort of trying to get the PC back to 'normal'.