Recovery partion "D". What do I do with it?

Yes I think you will be able to delete it during installation. Or perhaps try to delete it before installation by using Disk Management.

Make sure you burn the Vista installation DVDs from the recovery partition. It takes 3 DVDs. Just in case you ever want/need to reinstall your Vista.
For your files on the DVDs, you do not need the recovery partition. Just make sure the DVDs work. An external disk or a bigger USB stick would have been a better deal for backup.

mtbarbee said:

Also, I just ran a full back up to 10 DVDs for music, photos, vids, etc. Would I need the recovery partition to re-install these items? That is something that very much concerns me.

No, the recovery partition is pretty much useless except for what whs pointed out.

You can create your own primary Recovery partition after installing Win7 by using it's excellent Backup Imaging utlity to save an image there which can reimage your HDD in 15 minutes flawlessly, making reinstalls never again necessary.

Be sure to back up the image to an external drive in case of HDD failure.

Wii Master 64 said:

I have a recovery partition on my machine as well (it never came with a recovery disk or driver disk or anything), how do you burn a partition to a disk?

If you are asking how to burn recovery disks from that recovery partition, you need to look through your Program files to find the utility which does this. Check programs under the manufacturer's name, Recovery, make recovery disks, etc.

If you cannot find these after a thorough search and read of your manuals, call your manufacturer's tech support to ask how to do it.

thanks so much for the quick replies. That was the only question keeping me from installing Win7. Gonna pull that trigger this a.m. see ya guys soon nuff!

On many makes of PCs, you can type RECOVERY into the start/search field and "Recovery Disk Creation" will turn up. This is the wizard which will guide you. Have 3 DVDs handy.

Wii Master 64 said:

I have a recovery partition on my machine as well (it never came with a recovery disk or driver disk or anything), how do you burn a partition to a disk?

For a HP/Compaq .. look in Programs >> PC Help n Tools ... (Or something like this) ..
And find the recovery DVD creator.