Recovering Partition which now shows as Free Space

I was trying to install XP onto my W7 80GB hard drive. I shrunck the volume to create an additional partition on the C: drive and ended up with a 65GB and a 15GB partition. Due to a faulty installation I pulled stumps and decided to restore back to original configuration (1 X 80GB volume with W7 installed). I thought all I had to do was format the new 15GB partition which I was expecting to then show up as all one 80GB volume but it (15GB) shows up as free space. Can anyone tell me how I join this free space to the original 65GB C: Drive

You should be able to go into Disk Management within Windows 7 and right click your 65 gig partition and choose from a menu. I think it says something like "expand volume" or words to that effect.

If you can't do that, post a screenshot of what you see in Disk Management.

My answer assumes the 15 gig is "unallocated space". If it is in fact another partition, you would have to delete it as Jonathan says, and then extend.

If you have Free Space then it sounds like you were trying to install XP to a logical partition which will not work. You need a Primary Partition.

Delete all, Create New Primary partition and format using Disk Management or booted XP installer.

I have tried to extend the partition but this option is greyed out. I do not want to delete all as I would then lose my existing W7 which resides on the 65GB partition. When I attempt to delete the free space "partition" I get the message shown in my attached screen dump.

"This is an extended partition. The partition will be inaccessible if you delete it. Are you sure you want to delete the partition."

I am a bit unclear if I should say Yes to this option.

Any advice much appreciated.

Please post back a screenshot of your full Disk Management drive map, using Snipping Tool in Start Menu, attaching file using paper clip in Reply Box.

We can advise you better if we see it first.

Normally Free Space is reserving space for a Logical Extended partition which has been deleted, and can itself be deleted in Disk Mgmt by rightclicking to Delete Volume.

If this is not what you need, please post back a screenshot of your maximized Disk Mgmt drive map with listings, using the Snipping Tool in Start Menu.

To be specific, when I right-click on the free space, "Delete Partition" is grayed out because of that i formated the whole system but unable to formate/delete my 79gb(free space) in installationstage. when i select "define a new partition" the wizard pops up and I go through it, but when I click finish an error occurs saying "There is not enough space available on the disk". i will send my screen shorts soon . thanks for helping

Can you post a screen shot of Disk management?
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