Windows 7 recovery partition..

gregrocker said:

Partition Wizard CD will work fine to delete the unwanted Recov partition and Resize Win7 or any other partition into it. Just make sure it is your Win7 or it's 100mb SysReserved boot partition which is marked System Active first. Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

If you'd like specific steps to do this, post back a screenshot of your full Disk Mgmt drive map with listings, using SNipping Tool in Start Menu.

Thanks for the tip Greg, but it didn't work. Following your instructions, I booted off the Partition Wizard CD. Then I made the Win7 partition active (Win7 partition is the second one on the disk). Then I deleted the Recovery partition (first partition on the disk). Then I resized the Win7 partition to fill the capacity of the drive. Now the system will not boot. Complaining about missing file: /mininit/windows/system32/boot/winload.exe

I'm assuming that critical files like the MBR are probably stored on the first partition that was deleted? Victek warned about doing this unless the Recovery partition is the last one on the drive.

Fortunately I have a cloned backup of my original disk so nothing is lost. But to other folks - please don't try this if your Recovery partition is the first one on the drive.

Here is what worked for me in the end. These steps work when your OEM Recovery partition is the first partition on the disk.

1. Invoke DOS command prompt (Start --> Run --> cmd)
2. Change to Recovery partition (S: in my case)
3. Delete all directories and files on Recovery partition using RMDIR /S and DEL commands (hidden system files are preserved).
4. Reboot computer with Partition Wizard Bootable CD (free download at link provided above by gregrocker).
6. Resize Recovery partition down to minimal size (100MB in my case).
5. Rename "Recovery" partition label to "System" (just a more accurate description).
7. Apply changes (very fast).
8. Resize Windows 7 partition up to maximum size.
9. Apply changes (very slow).
10. Exit Partition Wizard, remove bootable CD, and reboot computer.

Voila! So far everything is working great. I'll post again here if I encounter any problems due to this.

Although I was not able to get rid of the OEM Vista Recovery partition completely, I reclaimed all but 100MB of the disk space.

Was waiting for a screenshot to see if Recov Partition was marked Active, as once you delete it you need to mark Win7 partition (or it's 100mb System Reserved boot partition) Active, then boot the Win7 DVD Repair Console or REpair CD to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times to write the System MBR to Win7.

Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

The benefit of leaving it the way you have is that you may still have the Repair My Computer console on the F8 Advanced Boot Tools menu as when Win7 creates the 100mb System Reserved boot partition. This is a nice convenience.

If not, you can delete the remaining Recov partition and run Startup Repair 3 times to write System MBR to the Active Win7 partition.

gregrocker said:

The benefit of leaving it the way you have is that you may still have the Repair My Computer console on the F8 Advanced Boot Tools menu as when Win7 creates the 100mb System Reserved boot partition. This is a nice convenience.

If not, you can delete the remaining Recov partition and run Startup Repair 3 times to write System MBR to the Active Win7 partition.

For 100MB I'm fine to leave it as-is. But for my own curiosity and education I'll experiment with those two options. Great forum here - Microsoft Support should be so good.