Windows 7: Need help with partitions/format!

Hello. Today i've installed windows 7 on my boyfriend's mum's laptop. She had 2 partitions, but wanted to keep her documents so i thought i'd install it on the other drive in case there's not enough room to keep the windows.old folder thingy with all her documents in (stupid idea, now i've realized) So now i have vista on c and win 7 on e.. and i can't format the c drive. She could really use the space. I do realize this question has been asked before, but most of the answers don't apply as i'm on a laptop. Is there any way i can format c without having to reinstall windows 7 again? If anyone can post a straightforward answer it would be great as i am not an expert in computers by any means!!



I hope i made myself understood in english as i'm not a native speaker, i apologize if i made any mistakes. Thanks in advance!

Hi.

Please post a screenshot of disk management. The files needed to boot Windows are on C: and we can help you move them elsewhere so you can format that partition.

For now, you can use msconfig from the start menu search box. Hit enter. Then go to the boot tab to remove Vista.

Yfrog - partitionsk

thanks for the boot advice, it does help a lot! it was a bit confusing for her to choose which OS to load when she starts the computer =P

Windows native disk management tools are fairly primitive, and moving the partition Windows 7 sits upon may prove tricky. Sometimes it helps to make a drive image (using Acronis TrueImage or something similar) and pop it onto a plug in external drive (or store it elsewhere on your network).

If you then use a disk partitioner to wipe the Windows 7 partition (and then expand the primary Vista partition to encompass the Windows 7 partition if you desire that) then you can boot from (for example) your Acronis optical rescue disk and rewrite your Windows 7 image over the primary partition where Vista was.

Windows own disk tools don't let you mess with the primary partition since it's classified as active by the operating system.

Of course if you don't have a good disk partition tool or something like the Acronis TI software - well you might ultimately prefer to reinstall Windows 7 and let Setup format the disk as desired.

First, make sure you can see hidden and system files.
Right click on E: and mark partition as active in disk management.

Copy and paste the bootmgr file from C: to E:
Copy and paste the boot folder from C: to E: and tell it to skip over copying bcd and bcd.log when it asks.

Open an elevated command prompt. Copy and paste the following, then hit enter:

bcdedit /export E:\boot\bcd

Reboot. Then open disk management and format C:

i cannot copy the file for some reason, i get an error saying "a required privilege is not held by the client." =/

Login with an administrator account first. Then follow my last post. Do not reboot at all if you already marked E: as active. Only reboot when you're completely done.

bugger. i am on an admin account. apparently i have to disable user account control or something and that needs a restart, but if you say i can't restart until i'm done, should i put c back to active then restart and try again?

Yes. That should be fine. Mark C: as active. Reboot. Then start again.

LOL - you sound like fun.

If you need to restart - mark c active again.