I installed Windows 7 on my computer and when it installed it created another partition of about 200Mb. My question is how and why did it do this and is there a way of installing W7 so it does not create this second partition. I did see that the second partition was mainly files that deal with back up and sys. information.Reason why I would like to get rid of this second partition is it has changed all my drive letters and now has all my games and other programs messed up to run on Vista properly. I run 4 hard drives and the second hard drive is for games only, in Vista it used to be labeled as D: drive but now it is E: drive and the D: drive now is the partition W7 created. W7 is on the G: drive. I also tried changing the drive letter of the second partition W7 created but it will not allow me, even in Vista I can not change the drive letter.If W7 is going to make partitions such as this I don't think I am going to care for it or it will take some time to get used to the new partitions showing up and also for installing games or whatever in Vista. Which now, Vist awould almost be better to do a fresh install after a format to get the registry all back in order to get the games to work properly. Does W7 create a second partition on pther peoples computers or is it just mine this happened to?

The 200MB partition is for BitLocker, should you choose to enable it. I believe you can choose not to let the partition be created during that initial partition creation during the installation. After the fact, it might be hard to do. I think you'd need a third-party partition manager and I have no idea if anything out there will work for Win7. I'd just reinstall the OS. After all, it's a beta and reinstallation is part of the whole beta experience. MS-MVP - Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!

Did you install W7 with all the other drives still installed...??? The 200mb partition is boot up, system recoverinfo needed by W7....if you install W7 onto a partition on the existing vista drive then you shouldn't see the issueas the boot/recover info with be placed into C:/Recover folder and no 200mb partition is created.....That said, either re-install on the disk you have but do it with the other disk disconnected..and/or shrinkyour vista disk using disk management tools in vista, then install W7 on the same drive as vista...Good Luck

As far as I know that partition contains the boot information. Any changes to the OS partition does not effect the boot.

As I understand it, the real problem that you're experiencing here is that, after Windows 7 created the boot partition, your Vista install is automatically mounting it.The solution is to go into Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and unmount it.You can also correct your drive letters from there.

The partition is for Bitlocker. In Windows Vista it was necessary to manually create a separate partition if you wished to enable Bitlocker functionality. In Windows 7 the operating system automatically creates a bitlocker partition to save the user having to do it him/herself.John Barnett - Windows XP Associate Expert; Windows Desktop Experience. - Web: http://www.winuser.co.uk; Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org; Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

John_Barnett said: The partition is for Bitlocker. In Windows Vista it was necessary to manually create a separate partition if you wished to enable Bitlocker functionality. In Windows 7 the operating system automatically creates a bitlocker partition to save the user having to do it him/herself. John Barnett - Windows XP Associate Expert; Windows Desktop Experience. - Web: http://www.winuser.co.uk; Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org; Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org ??? well the second partition isn't created on mine because it's on a partition on the main drive...andbitlocker works fine....so I'll stand by my original statement "The 200mb partition is boot up, system recoverinfo needed by W7....if you install W7 onto a partition on the existing vista drive then you shouldn't see the issueas the boot/recover info with be placed into C:/Recover folder and no 200mb partition is created....."until I see documentation that says differently

Hmm, the thing is I do not want to chance losing any data from any of my other HDD's. So, I was using an old IDE HDD to see what the W7 was like. My other HDD's are all SATA and easy to disconnect which I did to install W7. I then formatted the IDE HDD and then reinstalled W7 with my SATA HDD's connected. Only difference is when I reinstalled W7 with the other HDD's connected it does not show the 200Mb partition at all but Vista still does. I had already tried to remove the partition using W7 and Vista's Disk Management. I can't even change drive letters. I would not worry about it so if I could change the drive letters, which still makes no since to me why the partitions drive letter is D: even after connecting all my other HDD's and then reinstalling. Looks like my original D: drive would have prevented W7 from making another D: drive or reassigning the "D" to the partition anyway. Probably not a bug but something MS should consider getting worked out. BTW, another reason for not partitioning my primary HDD that has Vista on it is that it is only a 36Gb Raptor and Vista has it half full already, so no room for W7 to fit. I have also had folder options to show hidden files and folders on the partition, it does look like all the information used for boot purposes. Files and folders are: BOOTSECT.BAK, $RECYCLE.BIN, Boot, and bootmgr. What I said about doing a fresh install for Vista to get games back into order would be true but if I decide to get rid of W7 and the HDD it is on I would have to reassign the drive letters again. Of course it should be easy enough to do but it just throws the way I have things set up on my computer. Shame W7 won't install on a USB HDD, I would use one of them and that way I could get Vista organized with the proper drive letters if it is not seeing the other HDD with the 2 partions(one for W7 and the boot info). Wonder if I manually remove the HDD from the computer would Vista then go back to normal witht he drive letters?

msdz said:Hmm, the thing is I do not want to chance losing any data from any of my other HDD's. So, I was using an old IDE HDD to see what the W7 was like. My other HDD's are all SATA and easy to disconnect which I did to install W7. I then formatted the IDE HDD and then reinstalled W7 with my SATA HDD's connected. Only difference is when I reinstalled W7 with the other HDD's connected it does not show the 200Mb partition at all but Vista still does. I had already tried to remove the partition using W7 and Vista's Disk Management. I can't even change drive letters. I would not worry about it so if I could change the drive letters, which still makes no since to me why the partitions drive letter is D: even after connecting all my other HDD's and then reinstalling. Looks like my original D: drive would have prevented W7 from making another D: drive or reassigning the "D" to the partition anyway. Probably not a bug but something MS should consider getting worked out. BTW, another reason for not partitioning my primary HDD that has Vista on it is that it is only a 36Gb Raptor and Vista has it half full already, so no room for W7 to fit. I have also had folder options to show hidden files and folders on the partition, it does look like all the information used for boot purposes. Files and folders are: BOOTSECT.BAK, $RECYCLE.BIN, Boot, and bootmgr. What I said about doing a fresh install for Vista to get games back into order would be true but if I decide to get rid of W7 and the HDD it is on I would have to reassign the drive letters again. Of course it should be easy enough to do but it just throws the way I have things set up on my computer. Shame W7 won't install on a USB HDD, I would use one of them and that way I could get Vista organized with the proper drive letters if it is not seeing the other HDD with the 2 partions(one for W7 and the boot info). Wonder if I manually remove the HDD from the computer would Vista then go back to normal witht he drive letters? At the moment, booting from a USB drive is not supported. Also, not officially supported in this Beta is .VHD boot but I've been able to successfully install and boot Windows 7 from a .VHD file.A better option is to download and install Microsoft's Virtual PC. From here, you can create a Virtual Machine and install Windows 7 into the VM.Joe

Well, I am thinking of doing a format and fresh install of both OS's but my question would be now, "What OS should be installed first"? I take it Windows 7 should be the first to be installed so the partition it will create won't interfere with the drive letters and how I want them set up but I am not sure. I'll get fed up and end up getting rid of one OS or the other. Windows 7 seems to be the choice right now for me to keep cause it is less of a resource hog from what I have seen of it so far but I have not tried to do any gaming with it yet. That will be the real test for me. Oh, the boot manager must be messed up as well on my installs. I don't get the countdown timer to select which OS I want, it just stays on a black screen which has the choices along with (not sure about this) a memory test of some sort. Can't remember what it is called but know it scans the memory.

I got tired of fooling around with the fact that Vista had an extra partition showing up. I decided to back up all my important stuff to an external hard drive(HDD) and then start over. This time I decided I was going to run Windows 7 Beta solo. I formatted all my HDD's completely and then disconnected all of them except the HDD I planned on putting Windows 7 Beta on. I installed Windows 7 Beta on the HDD(which was my 36Gb Raptor, not the IDE HDD I was using to begin with), and all installed fine. No problems. I even connected my other HDD's back up and then moved my backed up data and files fromt he external HDD onto the my other HDD's with no problems. I no longer am seeing the partition like before so I am completely happy. I am also very happy with the speed improvement of Windows 7 Beta on my Raptor HDD compared to the IDE HDD I was using. All i can say is, "WOW"!!