Kaktussoft: thanks for the advice. I pressed F8, entered the recovery mode, selected command prompt, and executed your suggested commands. When I got to "delete part" I got the following message: "cannot delete a protected partition without the force protected parameter set." I selected Override and the partition was deleted. I now have 2.9 GB of unallocated space. How do I allocate it or attach it to my primary partition, C: ? Or, can I somehow use it as a drive to store files? Right clicking on the unallocated space in Win 7, computer management, doesn't allow me to do anything to it.