[Dick_in_SC]

I have tried unsuccessfully twice to upgrade Vista Home Premium 32 bit to W7 HP 32 bit. At the end of the install I get a message that the upgrade was not successful and the machine would be rolled back to the old operating system. Then I get stuck in a continuous loop as the upgrade disk continues to try to boot into W7 and not into Vista. There is nothing you can do to stop it (at least that I could find). Microsoft still has no answer for this. Finally I get tired of this, shut the computer down, and restore the disk image that I had previously made. This gets me back to Vista. I have a ton of software loaded on this machine which is why I was not looking forward to a clean install.

Now to my question. I have decided to do a clean install (probably the 64 bit version), which is what I should have done in the first place. I have two questions. 1) I have a 400 gig drive which is partioned from the factory (HP) as 390 gb "C" drive, and a 8 gb "D" recovery partition. How do I handle getting rid of the "D" partition. Or will it be removed during the clean install process, and 2) I would like to install the OS into its own partition after removing the recovery partition, but I am not sure how to do this.

Obviously I do not have the Vista install disks. I do have the recovery disks which I burned when the computer was new.

Thank you very much in advance for your help

[peck1234]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...ndows-7-a.html



In short...

1. Boot from dvd
2. Format then delete all partions
3. Install

[Dick_in_SC]

Thanks, Peck.

It is today's project. If I run into trouble, I'll give you guys another shout.

Dick

[TerryNet]

2. Format then delete all partions

To quibble, I think it's delete all partitions, create one large or however many partitions you want, and then format it/them. A "real" partition editor such as GParted may be easier to use.

[Dick_in_SC]

Thank you Terry. That makes sense to me. I am looking into GParted right now. Nervous about the whole format and re-partition thing. Guess I need to man up and get to it.

[TerryNet]

I understand your nervousness--I only started "playing" with partitioning less than 1 1/2 years ago. If you use GParted you'll find it fairly easy to use. One thing I sometimes forget is that after you finish creating your partition(s) you want to make sure that the one in which you will install is flagged "boot."

[Dick_in_SC]

and thank you for that tip also Terry. Slowly getting up the courage to do this. Spent most of the day today digging out the reg codes for all of the software I have purchased and downloaded. Tomorrow I am going to install a new optical drive. Mine will now only read and write CD and not DVD. Not sure what's up with that. Then over the weekend I am diving in with a clean install and re-downloading and installing my software.