Studio XPS Laptop 1645 Recovery Partition

I just finished a new installation of Win 7 from the Dell Disc to recover from a serious virus infection.  The installation created a E: partition of 14.6 GB which was almost full right after the reinstall and install of only antivirus/antimalware software.  When I tried to perform Windows updates I got a low disc space error from the E: partition and the updates wouldn't download until I created some space on the recovery partition by perfoming a "cleaning up", a compacting and a deletion of everything that the computer would allow.  Now there is still only 1.4 GB free space on the partition and the computer won't allow any more deletions.  It tells me that I require permission from TrustedInstaller.  I don't really care to use this partition except for sytem restore points.  Is there a way to delete all the other files on the partition?  Thanks in advance from a frustrated (and not terribly knowledgable) user