Help: What are these DELL "stealth" partitions?

[GTaudiophile]

I am looking at a new DELL machine right now. It has 4 partitions:

Unknown (47MB)
C: NTFS (34507MB)...Running WinXP PRO
Unknown (3585MB)
Unpartitioned (8MB)

I need to format this puppy and isnteall Win2K PRO German version.

Can I delete all these partitions or does that void my warranty or something? Is it safe to leave all but the C: partition?

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
I am looking at a new DELL machine right now. It has 4 partitions:

Unknown (47MB)
C: NTFS (34507MB)...Running WinXP PRO
Unknown (3585MB)
Unpartitioned (8MB)

I need to format this puppy and isnteall Win2K PRO German version.

Can I delete all these partitions or does that void my warranty or something? Is it safe to leave all but the C: partition?

You can kill them all & re-partition it as you see fit.

Typically there are diagnostic utilities, restore images, etc. stored in those partitions.

If you can't kill the partitions using the Windows setup utility grab a copy of zap & kill it that way.

Viper GTS

 

[GTaudiophile]

Thanks! I should have searched before posting...

Win2K Setup nuked them just fine!

Edit: Let's just hope I can find all the right drivers for this thing.

 

[biostud]

I once found a similar thing on a Compaq, and it refused to boot if the partition wasn't present It was on a PII-266 and the partition needed was ~20 mb.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: biostud666
I once found a similar thing on a Compaq, and it refused to boot if the partition wasn't present It was on a PII-266 and the partition needed was ~20 mb.

In some old Compaq's, the BIOS setup menus (just the interface, not the BIOS itself of course) were stored in a small partition on the hard drive. I don't know if any manufacturers do this anymore though.

 

[oog]

With my Sony laptop, they did not make the drivers available for download on their website -- you needed to either keep that partition around or create a set of CDs from that partition in order to get the drivers.