Well really what I wanted to do is dual boot, but all efforts have failed.  based on what you write, which is corect deleting partition would be a mistake.  What if I just install other os (linux) opting to use entire disk? will this completely overwrite hdd partitions including oem and recovery.

Henry

Since the Diag and Recovery partitions are at the front of the drive this is not advisable.

People get faked out by C: drive and assume that the large partition is at the front of the drive but this is false.

I would advise Getting a 16 gig or Larger USB 2.0 Flash drive and backing up the system with the basic Dell Datasafe Software.  This will make a Bootable usb flash drive that can be used to completely restore the Diag and the recovery and the factory condition to the current drive OR to a brand new unformatted drive of equal or larger size.

If you still insist on removing those partitions to get 12 gigs back then I recommend getting the Restore DVD for windows as well as the Driver Resource CD and the Roxio, Cyberlogic, and other Applications.

Then you can try deleting everything and starting with a blank formatted disk to install windows and the DVD player and CD Buring Apps etc.

Should you be unsuccessful in this with the USB flash media made by Dell Datasafe you can do a factory recovery and put it back to the way it came from dell on the current hard drive or a new one.

Well really what I wanted to do is dual boot, but all efforts have failed.  based on what you write, which is corect deleting partition would be a mistake.  What if I just install other os (linux) opting to use entire disk? will this completely overwrite hdd partitions including oem and recovery. Henry

Wiping out the entire disk so you can install Linux is NOT going to solve your Linux problem.

If you can't install Linux now, you still won't after you do this.

If you delete all the existing partitions, yes - it will remove everything.  Strong suggestion is to leave the Dell diagnostic partition - it takes up very little space and you may need it.

This is true, there is that possibilty, however all methods to dual boot have failed I believe because there is a hidden partition, which brings the total to 4.  If so then this is why dual booting fails, being that the max is 4 partitions, one partition must go and from what I see removing recovery is not as simple as it is on an hp laptop.  However I have succesfully run fedora 14 live from a usb, actually I am doing that right now, so if full install fails, then I will just run fedora 14 live for the time being.

Henry

Yea I know I see three partitions, I assumed there was  a hidden fourth partition.

Henry

I am not understanding what your problem is.

diagnostics + recovery + windows  = 3 partitions

You should be able to install Linux to partition 4 that you create.

I like dualbooting because it gives me the option to boot into Windows in case I need to run a tool that only runs in Windows.

You should try to understand how the process works.

If you create a 4th partition, make is extended. You can then create volumes within that. Linux can be installed to a volume within an extended partition, but not windows. I like to have a partition for data, which of formatted to NTFS.