Dell Utility Partition

I have a Dell 600m laptop which comes with a 50MB "Dell utility" partition that lies before the Windows partition and I wanna get rid of it. Partition Magic won't let me simply redistribute the free space onto the Windows partition (says "Program in use, run from floppy"), and I'm afraid I'll hose Windows if I change the Dell Util Part into an NTFS first since Windows likes to sit on the first bootable partition.. any ideas on getting rid of ti?

BTW.. is it bad for the backlight to turn on and off like standby then turn it back on?

Yeah, that Dell Utility Partition is just a freakin Diag program. You have the same 32 bit Diagnostic program on one of the blue Dell tools CDs that came with the machine. Feel free to axe it and reinstall Windows. I only find that partition useful with desktop machines because often times I find myself needing to run those diags and the customer doesn't have their discs and Dell has NEVER sent me a CD containing that app for Desktops (get em all the time for Lappies).

The best thing to do as others have said is wipe the drive and reinstall windows but why would you want to do this for 50 megs? I would leave it be untill you need to restore the system then kill it.

As long as you are sure you want to get ride of it. This is how to do it.

MAKE SURE YOU BACK EVERYTHING UP BEFORE YOU DO THIS
That said, I'm not responsable if you are a. dumb and don't follow my instructions, 2 have a problem in the middle of it. Cause any messups and all your data is BYE BYE.


-Control Pannel,
-Administrative tools,
-Computer Management,
-Expand "Storage" then select Disk Management.
-A screen will come up displaying all your current drives.
-Select Device 0 or what ever your hard drive is. In 99% of all laptops it's Device 0.
-Right click on it and select convert to Dynamic Disk. *Warrning this will take some time to complete pending how much data you have on the drive. The more you can dump to a desktop before you do this, the faster it will go.*
-Many hours late pending your computer, select the small 50MB partition.
-Right click on it and select Delete Logical Partition. Follow the instructions.
-Next you should have the option to make a new logical partion and apend it to the end of the old one. Yes on the fly.

If you wish to learn more about this, open up help in WINDOWS and look up Dynamic Disk Management. I suggest you do a little reading before you attempt this. AS things are diffrent on some systems. Oh yea, you may have to convert everything to NTFS first. It should be NTFS anyways.

If you want to get rid of the partition without reinstalling windows, just Ghost your windows partition to CD/DVD/other computer and then use your Windows XP CD to partition, then Ghost the image back to the drive.

Doesn't seem worth the bother for only 50 megs of space.