Windows 7: 200 Meg hidden System partition

Something along the lines of <thread title> "Help! I just deleted a small and useless partition to reclaim space and now my Windows won't start!" ?

Hi Smarty,

Well they couldn't use " I think I've broken Something " you've got the copyright on that one

I appreciate all the input.
I lettered the partition and was able to see the BCD, memtest, bootmgr, etc... It's definitely the boot...er....system...well...whatever it's called it is has the files that Windows needs to get itself up and going.

I do tech support for small businesses and if it it's not lettered most users won't ever even know it's there. It's the "power" users that will decide that it's not needed and try to mess with it. Fortunately, the only way to delete the partition is to remove the drive and do it from another system or boot to knoppix or erd, and kill it. Still, there is nothing to prevent someone from just deleting all the files in it.

I think this fits in with MS move towards componentization. It also might be a sign of MS moving even further towards virtualization. It seems conceivable that Hyper-V could be dropped into that partition and everything runs as a VM – albeit unknown to most users. Also, moving the bootstrap out of the core OS is required if you are going to boot to a VHD, which is one of the new Windows 7 features. It all makes sense now.

lol. I'll be looking for royalties....

LOL

Good point Gary - I'm sure people will try.


I don't think it will allow you to do that - at least not if you are using Disk Management.

Anybody got one of those little System partitions and would like to try deleting it to see if it lets you? (Don't try this unless you're an advanced user)

Hi NickDanger:

Yep - we get a few posting questions on the Vista Forum who want to empty/delete the oem "recovery" partition because they don't know what it is.

SIW2

Yes and now we'll get to explain 2 partitions instead of one. If they can't delete it, that's just gonna make 'em mad and they'll want to know how to get rid of it. But then that is *one* of the reasons for hanging around here. To try to prevent tragedies when we can and to help people recover from tragedies when it's tooooo late.

Gary

If they are stupid enough to think that 200 MB is going ot help their systemin anyway, good luck to them trying to delete it.

Even on a small 40 GB HD, 200 MB amounts to less than 1% of space....

For many, it's not really about *how much* space it is, they tried to delete it and couldn't. They tried to format it and couldn't. That will just piss some off. "What do you mean I can't delete it, it's my &^$$#%# computer. Some, like myself, would say 'OK what am I not understanding here? I have one on my dell that I can't assign a driver letter to. 55MB. The space is nothing, but until I found out what is in there-the whats, whys, and wherefores- I was not satisfied.

Gary

Again, if they are not savvy enough to understand that the 200 MB space might be there for a reason, then they really have no business poking around the computer's innards.

I cannot count the number of times someone with less then techie skills has gone in and done something just as you are hypothesizing - that is what gets users into trouble in the first place,. Yes, it may be *your* computer, but give the developers of the OS *some* credit - that is there for a reason, why try to mess with it? Give your OEM some credit for setting up the system as they do - that extra partition at the end is there for a *reason* why try to mess with it?

In the grand scheme of things it would be a lot better if tools like Disk Management used pretty accurate representations, so that a 200 MB sized partition does not appear to be 1/2 the size of a 400 GB partition. Then again, there are always going to be those people who have only a little knowledge, but think it is their right to do anything they want to their systems.

I love the little dell partition!! I boot to it all the time on systems for hardware troubleshooting. My biggest complaint is that they don't provide an easy way to create the partition when the drive dies and you have to reload the OS.

As for the new system partition, if someone has the knowledge to access it and mess with it but lacks the common sense to find out what it's for before they mess with it, then they disserve whatever trouble they get. The best way to learn is to break something.