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From the sound of it, you may be better off reinstalling Windows 7 since you were able to recovery your files, and that the Windows 8 Developer Preview has expired.
From the sound of it, you may be better off reinstalling Windows 7 since you were able to recovery your files, and that the Windows 8 Developer Preview has expired.
I have a strange situation right now. I have a copy of Windows 7 Professional (x64) waiting to get on my computer and get dual booted with my OEM Windows 8.1. In the process of partitioning, being the stupid person I am, I converted my boot disk (Disk 0) into a dynamic disk. I am currently following option one to return to basic and I am stuck since it only allows four partitions for the program to work. I always get 'Failed to convert the specified dynamic disk.' if I try to use it. So I am wondering what partition I can delete. Here are all of my partitions:
Healthy (EFI System Partition) 500 MB
Healthy (OEM Partition) 40 MB
Healthy (Recovery Partition) 500 MB
Windows 8 Standard Edition (C:\) 1854.76 GB
Healthy (Recovery Partition) 7.11 GB
Can I possibly delete one of these and not suffer reinstalling Windows?
Hello 1ct01a, and welcome to Seven Forums.
Please go ahead and post a screenshot showing your Disk Management to help make sure we give the proper advice.
Since this is an OEM and UEFI installation, it's going to limit the options since we do not want to delete any of your factory recovery partitions.
The 1MB partition was created when the Windows partition was converted as Dynamic.
The safest thing to do would be to do a factory recovery to avoid possibly corrupting the recovery partitions.
If you have not already, create a recovery drive with a copy of your recovery partitions included to have as a backup. This way you could also use the recovery drive to reinstall Windows with if needed.
Recovery Drive - Create with USB Flash Drive in Windows 8
Is it possible to use an OEM disk with my computer for Windows 8? (not 8.1) Also, when I try to create a recovery drive, it says I have required files that are missing.
Since this is for a Dell, see if this may help.
Windows 8 Dell Backup and Recovery - Windows 8 - Software & Operating Systems - Dell Community
Hello Rajdhakate,
From the error message, the program only supports converting a "simple" or "mirrored" dynamic volume back to basic.
More on the different types here: What Are Dynamic Disks and Volumes?: Storage Services
If you like, you could use one of the other options to convert it back to basic. The other options will wipe the drive though, so be sure to temporarily backup the data to another location first.