Unknown partition

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Guest

Been struggling with a Tojan horse, and ended up screwing up the works.
Norton says it cleans it, then it keeps coming back. Decided to reformat
ande reinstall Windows XP. During the install process I'm asked to choose a
partition to install onto, I'm given these choices:
-:partition 1 [FAT] 31MB (no drive letter designation for this partition)
C:partition 2 [NTFS] 38131MB
Is this small FAT partition needed, or is it possibly something created by
my virus to hide in?
 
A lot of computer manufactures, Dell,Gateway etc. put a hidden partition on
the drive for you to reinstall the system.
 
What good is it? Understand, I'm itching to delete something!


Jim said:
A lot of computer manufactures, Dell,Gateway etc. put a hidden partition on
the drive for you to reinstall the system.

rwood said:
Been struggling with a Tojan horse, and ended up screwing up the works.
Norton says it cleans it, then it keeps coming back. Decided to reformat
ande reinstall Windows XP. During the install process I'm asked to choose
a
partition to install onto, I'm given these choices:
-:partition 1 [FAT] 31MB (no drive letter designation for this partition)
C:partition 2 [NTFS] 38131MB
Is this small FAT partition needed, or is it possibly something created by
my virus to hide in?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Well, I would check with the manufacturer of your computer before I did
anything to be certain. I threw away my recovery CD"s, deleted the partition
that was similar to yours and bought a full copy of XP to reinstall Windows.

rwood said:
What good is it? Understand, I'm itching to delete something!


Jim said:
A lot of computer manufactures, Dell,Gateway etc. put a hidden partition
on
the drive for you to reinstall the system.

rwood said:
Been struggling with a Tojan horse, and ended up screwing up the works.
Norton says it cleans it, then it keeps coming back. Decided to
reformat
ande reinstall Windows XP. During the install process I'm asked to
choose
a
partition to install onto, I'm given these choices:
-:partition 1 [FAT] 31MB (no drive letter designation for this
partition)
C:partition 2 [NTFS] 38131MB
Is this small FAT partition needed, or is it possibly something created
by
my virus to hide in?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for your reply. I pulled this from Dell's community forum.

This article came from Dell and will explain the hidden partition.

The FAT partition that exist on the drive contains diagnostic software that
is installed at the factory when the system is built; the reason for this
being setup on a FAT partition is so that it can be accessed through a boot
disk in case the NTFS partition is not bootable.

You do not have to have this diagnostic partition on a system for normal
operation, but I would not advise that anyone but more advance users remove
this as it may be helpful for some types of technical problems if you have to
call into Dell Technical Support.

You should be able to remove it without causing a problem.


Jim said:
Well, I would check with the manufacturer of your computer before I did
anything to be certain. I threw away my recovery CD"s, deleted the partition
that was similar to yours and bought a full copy of XP to reinstall Windows.

rwood said:
What good is it? Understand, I'm itching to delete something!


Jim said:
A lot of computer manufactures, Dell,Gateway etc. put a hidden partition
on
the drive for you to reinstall the system.

Been struggling with a Tojan horse, and ended up screwing up the works.
Norton says it cleans it, then it keeps coming back. Decided to
reformat
ande reinstall Windows XP. During the install process I'm asked to
choose
a
partition to install onto, I'm given these choices:
-:partition 1 [FAT] 31MB (no drive letter designation for this
partition)
C:partition 2 [NTFS] 38131MB
Is this small FAT partition needed, or is it possibly something created
by
my virus to hide in?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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