Just reinstalled Win7, walked away from the PC during the re-installation and it appears that a second partition was created in stead of overwriting the old partition. How can I start up the PC and delete the old OS? Or should I just re-install Win7 again and be at the PC when it goes through the steps?
If this is a brand new installation, I'd start all over. An installation normally takes no more than 30 minutes or so.
Begin with only 1 hard drive connected.
Delete all existing partitions when given the chance.
You should end up with 1 very small "System Reserved" partition and 1 larger C partition covering the rest of the drive.
Backup any data on the drive if you have anything personal on it.
when will i be prompted to delete old partition? This is not a new install but a reinstall. Having problems with win 7 so i decided to reinstall it, hoping it would overwrite the old os.
I agree with Ignatz. When I had a similar problem I had to do a reinstall and along the way it asks about partitions and you do as he has said and you will end up with the one partition with the new Win7 on it. If I have mis-remembered and it doesn't ask you, I know there is a screen where you can make that decision.
Once that has been successful you can create another partition in Win7 Admin tools and computer mgmt. I did as I like to have a partition just for data as opposed to one with the OS and data. That's up to you.
Look at steps 7 and 8 here:
Clean Install Windows 7
Look for "drive options, advanced". Choose that, then delete all partitions.
That will make the whole drive "unallocated space".
Then continue. Windows will format the unallocated space automatically.
Before you install Windows to a partition you have options at the bottom to delete or make a couple partitions out of one
After you established what drive and partition's you want to use you can then go ahead and install WINDOWS
One thing i see you didn't do when Reinstalling WINDOWS was wiping the hard drive clean and re-alligning the hard drive to make sure all is well
As above follow the steps and you can't go wrong
Last edited by Solarstarshines; 14 Apr 2012 at 11:28.
Thanks for the reminder, Ignatz, that's what I did and it worked fine. Hope No Clue gets it.
In addition to Ignat's sage advice, if this is for your SystemMax rig follow these additional steps to get a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
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