Leftover HD partition from last system refresh

SLLAB02

SLLAB02

New Member
A while ago I did the whole restore-my-comp-back-to-square-one procedure and erased my harddrive and tried to start anew. But somehow I jagged it and since then whenever I restart my computer, I'm confronted with a dos screen that asks which Microsoft Windows partition I want to start with. This alone isn't a problem but I know that it means some things from the last harddrive are left over. Upon further investigation I found all sorts of items from My Documents folder that I wish had been deleted.
Aside from manually going into the old harddrive folders and deleting these things myself, what can I do to keep all the data on my current desired partition (which i use every day) and delete the rest that should have been deleted long ago, or....just back up what I have now on my comp that i want to save and THEN do another complete system restore that won't leave anything behind this time?
 
You obviously have two not one parition where you reformatted perhaps the recovery partition and left the OS visible partition intact. The original installation was then added into the boot.ini file on the second new installation of Windows. Besides editing the boot.ini with notepad you can use the Disk Management tool found under "Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management" to reformat the old partition.

But is that the first or second partition on the drive itself seeing the new copy of Windows? Time to use GParted to delete the old, move the new formerly hidden to the beginning of the drive, and then create your second partition for storage.
 
GParted will easily remove all partitions found on the drive. But you would still need a good recovery disk you can boot up from or a full version of Windows to install Windows onto a new single primary. GParted can be used for creating the new one as well as the XP installer. But the XP installer will still have to format the partition in order to copy the setup files to it.
 
Okay before I say anything else.........you guys know those "...For Dummies" books that they make? Well they make those for people like me. So I'm afraid you're gonna have to break it down a bit!

But is that the first or second partition on the drive itself seeing the new copy of Windows? Time to use GParted to delete the old, move the new formerly hidden to the beginning of the drive, and then create your second partition for storage.
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Basically this is what happened. At the time of my last reformat, the intention was to COMPLETELY wipe out everything and start anew. What I suppose happened was that I was able to start anew but the old but somehow clicked the wrong button and the old data was left on there. So that would make this the second partition seeing windows.
As far as a second partition goes (the one that I'm not using right now while typing this, the one that I started anew so long ago) the only thing I want on that is what comes by default when you first get your comp. I don't need storage on my internal HD (i just got an external in other unrelated news)

GParted will easily remove all partitions found on the drive. But you would still need a good recovery disk you can boot up from or a full version of Windows to install Windows onto a new single primary. GParted can be used for creating the new one as well as the XP installer. But the XP installer will still have to format the partition in order to copy the setup files to it.
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I already have the windows I want. I just want to get rid of the old one. I don't want to reformat the entire thing, just remove what was left over. Is there a way to do that? I dont need any new setup files.

This Control Panel utility you mentioned...what EXACTLY can be done here that I wouldn't do with the Gparted utility or Windows reboot disc? What does Gparted do that the Computer Management utility can't?
 
Your present primary partition has Windows running on it? That was the question asked there with your mention of two partitions seeing Windows installed. First you have to know the size of the partition you are currently running this copy of Windows on. You do that by opening up the MyComputer link or folder seen in Windows Explorer or simply double click on the MyComputer desktop to see the drives installed.

You simply right click on the C and D if second partition to see how much is used or free space and add the total to see how large each parition is there. What you are doing is displaying the properties of each logical drive seen on the one hard drive. If you have a 120gb drive one could be 60gb while the other is 54+gb. With GParted or the Disk Management tool you can delete the second partition once you know which one it is. GParted will clearly to the second one as "HDa2" as the second partition while the DM sees the drive letter assigned only.

The second question is partially answered now with adding one other thing to that. The Disk Management tool in XP and not even in Vista can create a new partition on a drive. The installer when booting with the Windows install disk of either readily can where you then exit the installer after to cancel an unnecessary installation. Once in the DM in either XP or Vista you can now right click on the partition selected to choose the full format option(recommended) or the "quick format". The links here show what the DM looks like in Vista with four hard drives not one with the last being formatted following that seeing GParted create the new single partition there.

Right click on drive for choosing the format option, http://img241.imageshack.us/my.php?image=addedsataformattingrv8.jpg

You will note that the previous screen there shows some 8mb of free space empty on the XP Home primary ide drive. While performing the full format on the second sata drive the 8mb space saw that swallowed up with Vista's not XP's ability to increase the size of any partition. http://img375.imageshack.us/my.php?image=almosttherekk6.jpg

I could easily booted with either the XP or Vista installation disk to see the partition created on the newly added sata. But GParted can do that as well as resizing or moving partitions. Microsoft finally catching onto that with the new ability to shrink or grow partitions now added to both the options on the installation and the Disk Management tool. The one thing GParted can't do is format any partition. That's why the DM is used when having more then one drive installed on a system. While the DM is formatting a slave drive you can be busy doing other things.

http://img241.imageshack.us/my.php?image=formatconfirmedvm2.jpg
 
If by "size of the partition" you mean size of the harddrive, its 80 gigabytes. I only have 1 hard drive, and it's just over three quarters full (16 gb free space) it IS possible to have more than one Windows partition on the same harddrive, right?

And as far as Gparted goes, I made a boot disc and when I restart the system with the disc in the drive, dos seems to recognize it.........but it just kind of freezes after the screen displays the words "starting boot utility" or whatever. When I made the boot CD in nero i pretty much just copied the files onto a boot disc. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

The Disk Management tool in XP and not even in Vista can create a new partition on a drive. The installer when booting with the Windows install disk of either readily can where you then exit the installer after to cancel an unnecessary installation.
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I'm having trouble understanding you here. I dont want to CREATE a new partition at all. I just want to delete all the garbage that was left over from before my most recent reformat of windows.
 
You have two main options with the 80gb drive there when seeing the lack of drive space come up. The first will depend on backing up any important things up onto removable media for safe keeping before taking steps needed to free up drive space if you intend to preserve the present installation of Windows and the partition itself.

One freeware pointed at quite a bit for cleaning up now useless temp folders created by software installers is called the "crap cleaner' namely CCleaner found free at http://www.ccleaner.com/

This mainly removes those folders as well cleaning up your browser history, saved user name and password info for different sites like email or here while not removing a folder full of items you have saved in a folder you created for storage. This is backing up any important and maybe non replacable items is the most commonly heard advice.

When you say reformat of Windows? that should be stated as reinstallation of Windows or simply a "reinstall" to clarify that. You are the one stating a leftover partition. That sounded like having more then one there. Erasing your hard drive would be "reformatting" there. Now you simply need to delete files to see the amount of free hard drive space become larger. Sometimes that also means hand picking the files that you no longer have use for and deleting them as well as first backing up important files to delete the entire folder you have them stored in.
 
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