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W7 Pro multiple existing partitions
I have a 6 month old Samsung ultraportable that has developed Windows problems and I am trying to re-install Windows 7 Pro. The history is that Windows 7 Home Premium came pre-installed, and I upgraded to 7 Pro right after I bought it, with no problems. Everything has been great until the last 2 weeks when the laptop would not start. After trying multiple times to recover, including the Windows recovery disc and Samsung's internal recovery options, I have given up and am now attempting a clean, fresh re-install. I have already done this once (yesterday) and I am having the same non-start problems.
In an attempt to do this in a truly clean way, I want to wipe out everything that might be leftover. My question is how to do this, particularly regarding the partitions that are already setup on the laptop. Here are the partitions that setup is finding:
Disk 0 Partition 1, 10.6 GB/0.0 MB free; "Primary"
Disk 0 Partition 1, 4.3 GB/4.3 GB free; "OEM (Reserved)"
Disk 1 Partition 1, 100 MB/70 MB free; "System"
Disk 1 Partition 2, 446 GB/393 GB free; "Primary"
Disk 1 Partition 3, 19.7 GB/959 MB free; "OEM (Reserved)" - this one is also named "SAMSUNG_REC"
Questions:
1. Should I leave all these partitions intact, or delete them and start over?
2. If I should leave them intact, into which partition should I install the fresh version of W7 Pro?
3. What is your advice on whether other partitions should be set up for A) programs, and B) data (documents, photos, music, etc)?
Thanks in advance. I would really appreciate specific help on this so I can get back to work!
Waiting in Oklahoma