Help with clean install of Windows 7 please?

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Handykindabloke

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Hi

I have a new (second hand) Dell Optiplex. It has two Hard Drives of 500Gb.

One drive is partitioned into three C D E. C being the Boot drive with Program Files. The problem is that this partition is only 49Gb which is nowhere near big enough.

I have no programs or data that needs saving and I have a Dell OS Re-Installation disk for the OS and I have the product key. But no Drivers Disk. I can download the drivers from Dell but there are quite a few and I don't know if I need all/any of them.

Do I need to format the hard disk to get rid of the partitions (or to reset to two sensible sized ones), or can I adjust the partitions without disrupting the boot partition and OS?

I am well versed with re-installations with the original disks but this is new to me so any help will be gratefully received.

Thanks

DAvid
 
ISTR that during the install when you choose the install drive, you get to choose to delete partitions and create new ones, so you can re partition the whole drive.
 
49 GB is a reasonable partition size for the O/S and program files if you maintain a regime of keeping O/S and data in separate volumes (handy if you want to reinstall in future and not lose your data). If you keep that, you can reinstall Windows and resize the partitions (including o/s partition) from Disk Management (assuming Vista or later). As you have two drives you might want to put the page file on the second drive (not the second volume) for speed purposes. If you want to keep the current installation, you can do this without reinstalling, but I would be very cautious about that (my day job has taught me that other people's leftovers can bite you in the backside in a number of ways).

Personally, I would favour this method as some OEM reinstall disks are very picky about doing a clean install from scratch.

As far as the drivers are concerned, establish your Dell service tag number and go to their download area. You should be prompted for the number and that will give you an idea which drivers you will need to download.

Sometimes I hanker for DOS
 
Handykindabloke said:
Hi

I have a new (second hand) Dell Optiplex. It has two Hard Drives of 500Gb.

One drive is partitioned into three C D E. C being the Boot drive with Program Files. The problem is that this partition is only 49Gb which is nowhere near big enough.

I have no programs or data that needs saving and I have a Dell OS Re-Installation disk for the OS and I have the product key. But no Drivers Disk. I can download the drivers from Dell but there are quite a few and I don't know if I need all/any of them.

Do I need to format the hard disk to get rid of the partitions (or to reset to two sensible sized ones), or can I adjust the partitions without disrupting the boot partition and OS?

I am well versed with re-installations with the original disks but this is new to me so any help will be gratefully received.

Thanks

DAvid
Click to expand...

It's good idea to wipe clean the first disk which has 'C D E' partions and partition it again to have 50gb for OS. Once you have installed Windows 7 or 8 you can then partion the rest as you like. Because it's second hand PC try making it a clean slate.

Regards
 
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