HP_Tools partition

Mine has both "HP_TOOLS" and "HP-RECOVERY" Here's hoping it's a long time before I need either one. BTW, thanks for a most informative website. I've learned a lot.

Bare Foot Kid said:

Have a look at this one for information that may be useful.

Dual Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu

Alright, I'll try this as soon as I extend my partition (which I'm gonna try to do right now). I'll go ahead and try to use Ubuntu instead of GNOME (it really doesn't make a difference to me).

Alright, I'll look into that. By the way, the partition wizard you told me to download earlier is the same one used in the extending partitions tutorial, right? Also, I'm not seeing one of my partitions as Windows 7 (but I'm assuming it's just because it doesn't actually have a name, which you can see from my screenshot).

Since no one has answered your question yet about HP Tools partition: It contains the hardware diagnostics utility preinstalled at factory. Take a look at those tools now in All Programs to decide if you want them. If not you can delete it. If so I would save it.

On newer HP's they have included a Minimized Recovery option when you run Factory Recovery which is very close to a clean reinstall without HP bloatware, with just a couple of those utilities which can easily be deleted in Control Panel. For this reason I would keep Recovery in place, or at the very least make your HP Recovery Disks.

Of course if you don't want any of the bloatware or factory utilities and prefer to clean reinstall using a Win7 installation DVD for your version with the Product Key on the COA sticker, you don't need any of those partitions.

Ok, so I tried making the Windows 7 partition a logical partition and everything worked ok there. But then I tried to shrink the volume (by 3073MB), and when I selected the amount of space I got a pop-up that said "The volume you have selected to shrink may be corrupted. Use Chkdsk to fix the corruption problem, and then try to shrink the volume again."

I ran Chkdsk, but it immediately disappeared on me (not sure if that's what it's supposed to do; maybe it runs in the background). Any help for that?

Also, gregrocker, because I don't want to screw anything up I want to try anything I can before deleting a partition.

EDIT: Ran Chkdsk as an administrator and it's actually running now. I'll edit again when it's finished and I try to shrink the volume again.

If you're using Partition Wizard it has System File Checker built in (which is Disk Check). I'd also run Surface Scan of HD.

Success. Everything installed fine and is working great. Thanks for the help, everyone.