Technical, but not SL related

I want to wipe my drive and put a fresh Vista 32 bit OS on my computer. Wiping, formating and installing operating systems is nothing really new to me......I've done it numerous times. The problem I think I might encounter is that whenever I've done any of that in the past it was always on a computer I had put together myself. The computer I want to do that with this time is a Lenovo desktop with an OEM Vista preinstalled (haha.....I won't be buying anymore "off the shelf" machines again ).

The computer and Vista are not my problem......it's the OEM that Lenovo put on this machine. For some reason Lenovo thought it best to partition the 500 gig HD into three partitions (one is hidden.......what they call the "service partition". The other two partitions are for the operating system and programs/data. The problem I have is the partition for the operating system is too small.......30 gigs. Vista is a big program and it takes nearly half that just for the bare installation. Throw in the restore points Vista makes for almost any little thing, change, installation, uninstallation that 30 gigs gets eaten up fast. I'm constantly having to delete all the most recent restore point just to keep that partition near 50% full. And, as you know, let your drive get much over 50% things start to slow down. All my programs are on my drive D except the ones that just won't install on a drive other than the drive your OS is on.......like Quicktime.

I checked with Lenovo's support to see if I can resize that operating system partition to maybe about 100 gigs. They say "maybe"........LOL. Well "maybe" got me to thinking.......if I screw it up and it doesn't work then I start all over. With the same 30 gig OS partition. So I thought I would just purchase a full copy (or upgrade copy since I have a full copy of XP to qualify me for that too) of Vista and partition the drive the way I want to.

So now to the meat of my question. This is an OEM copy of Vista on a computer built to Lenovo's specifications (motherboard, etc). Will I run into any problems with a full HD wipe, format and installation of Vista on this machine that was built expressly for Lenovo? I mean motherboard drivers, onboards, etc. The reason I'm asking is that a few years ago I wiped a friends computer for her because she was having nothing but problems (a Compaq.......LOL) and installed XP for her. It did not go well. I don't know if the computer I was working with was the problem or the installing the XP on the computer designed for Compaq with Win 98 was the problem.

So, I'm asking some of you on this forum who I've become to look up to for information. Osgeld, Robot..........you know who you are.

Thanks,
Peggy

you could reformat and put XP on it. BUT. I would just reccomend using an ubuntu live cd and repartioning the drives. (mine was 250/250, repatrioned (with linux, twice) 350/40 had 0 issues, except it at first said it was corrupted, just make OEM backup discs

I think if you cross the anna-panna-canna-zan with the CPU's original root OS then you will probably go plaid.

I guess I need an interpeter.

You should be able to write that service partition to DVD and load the os from that. Leaving you to create the HDD as you wish. Don't know about Lenovo but other majors do this.
Remember that when the HDD is setup and formatted, reboot again to set the partitions before restarting the install.
btw.. Linux should be 100% compatible on Lenovo i.e. IBM notebook.

Sorry, I should have said in my opening post that I want to stick with Vista. I tried Linux about 5 years ago and decided that I did want to go back to a command line OS so I deleted that partition on my hard drive and went back to XP.

I also should have said I know how to partition a HD......and resize too. That service partition that Lenovo puts is related to their "One Click" recovery system.......a snapshot of your drive similar to Symantic's Ghost. I don't use that feature because it was actually worse than Vista constantly creating restore points (taking up space on my 30 gig partition). I uninstalled the One Click program but the partition is still there.....not a real problem however. What I'm concerned about is that reading on Lenovo's support forum many people have wanted the same thing I do.......more room on the partition that Vista is installed on (drive C. Some have tried resizing the partition and had problems that only a system recovery (from the disks included with the computer) could solve.......they were back to square one. The OS partition is still 30 gigs.

So, I thought I would just bypass those recovery disks and get my own (non OEM) Vista license and wipe the drive to delete all partitions and remove any data on the drive, then format to NTSF and do a clean install from scratch. My potential problems that I can see are motherboard drivers, onboard audio drivers, NIC drivers and any other onboard peripherals that I use (I don't use the onboard graphics so that is not a problem).

I use PC Wizzard 2008 to get a lot of information about my computer. But on the motherboard, audio, NIC, etc all PC Wizzard tells me is "Provided by OEM Lenovo". So I know there is some customizating of the BIOS that is strictly related to Lenovo......and my question is will this make it difficult to do what I want. I like I said, I tried installing XP on an OEM computer a few years ago..........it did not work. The computer would not boot to XP. But it was a crappy computer with tons of problems so I'm still not sure if it was me installing XP on a Compaq computer that had an OEM Windows 98 preinstalled or the computer just was not capable of running XP anyway. Things like that stick in my mind.

Is there a Lenovo forum to post this question at?

I wonder if a different system info utility would give different results. (Not that that has anything to do with anything.)

I posted this question on the Lenovo forums.........that's how I know many have had big problems with resizing the C: partition. No one there seems interested in a Microsoft version of Vista....they like the OEM, I guess. And no positively straight answer. I also contacted Lenovo support and got a big "maybe" on the resizing. I didn't mention getting a Vista personal license to support though.

Thought I'd post here.......a little more varied group here. Plus I've read quite a few tips and tricks by some people I've come to trust.

When you purchase a desktop system, you should not be constrained to only using the manufacturers elements, that is the very essence of the PC architecture. That said, the likes of Dell, do have some strange ideas of what their buyers need. This is a notebook, which does restrain further the upgrade/options.

Why not simply install a 2nd HD and load Vista onto that? You can dual boot to whichever OS you want and overcome the issues. That is assuming of course that Lenovo do indeed supply its drivers from an internet source.

I did a search on Levovo, which seem to be a subsidary of IBM, http://www.pc.ibm.com/uk/notebook/?en and they do indeed have downloadable drivers.

Personally, this is one of those 'handholding/one button' solution systems.

Will Lenovo send you a Windows DVD? If you haven't asked, I'd do that before I spent the money on another copy. You already own a copy, I think they're probably obligated to send you the media if you ask for it.

Okay, thanks everyone for all your imput and suggestions. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm not afraid to try to resize my partitions so I'm going to backup all the stuff that is important to me and burn to a DVD. Then try resizing my C: partition to 90 or 100 gigs If that works for me, I'm fine with the OEM...........for now (I still will never buy another off the shelf computer again though ). If that does not work then I guess I go back to the recovery disks and get this machine back to factory configuration and maybe look into dual booting (but I need to research that because I've heard Windows does not conexist well with another Windows OS on the same computer......don't know that for a fact though). I might just go ahead and purchase a license for Vista and give it a shot..........if that does not work then I'll go back to the OEM again and wait till I get ready to build my next machine.........I'll need a licensed copy of Vista for that anyway.

At any rate, whatever I do I will try to remember to post back in case anyone else is interested in doing something like this too. It will probably be a couple to a few weeks before I get involved in this "project"........lots of RL stuff coming up soon for me.

Thanks again,
Peggy

uhm... you said it yourself... 5 years ago.

lets convert that to worldly measures... sounds like "I don't like cars, i tried a ford model T 90 years ago and didnt like it."

I have one machine that has 7 HD's on it. On one HD I have XP, on another Vista 32bit, and another Vista 64bit and I have no problems 'dual booting'. I use iReboot from NeoSmart Technologies, to quickly reboot between OS's without a single issue.

You know, I'm not in a habit of bad mouthing anyone's choice of operating system. It' my choice to stick with Windows OS's. If you don't like that, fine.......but don't try to be cute about it. Keep your Linux and Macs........I'll keep my Windows. I won't inject sarcastic rude comments about your choice.........I'd appreciate you respecting mine in turn.

Thank you AWM, I might just do that.........I just need an new SATA HD. And I can always put that in my new computer when I get around to building it too. Geeze, I get another 500 gig HD and I'll have a terrabyte of storage..................LOL.

I think the posters who mentioned Ubuntu were suggesting using it as a tool to resize your Windows partitions, which it can do. It's handy that way and as a rescue disk (current versions have full read/write NTFS support built in, and if you're logged in as root it ignores all file ownership issues) even if you choose not to run Linux as your main operating system.