I need a bit of help, and probably an understanding, with Vista Ultimate Disk Management, and how to resolve my Primary Partition Problems.
(Photo attached to illustrate where I am now), not where I've been.
Background:
Before I encountered my problem, I had four primary partitions, one OEM, 78mb, one Recovery partition, 10mb (both from Dell), my OS Partition, and another "empty partition." Again, All primary.
The last partition I mentioned above , the "empty" one that I intended on installing XP on, was born from the space of media center partition, (also from Dell), but made it larger. Vista only allowed me to make this a simple partition on its creation, and not Primary.
I did make this partition Primary using the DISKPART tool. Then I had four Primary Partitions. I found i liked vista and did not want to put XP on system, so I deleted the last partition. Three partitions left, (seen in photo, Disk management).
When I did, and this is the problem, the deletion of this partition caused my Recovery partition and Operating system partition to cahnge to "Simple Dynamic." Vista Starts fine but if I attempt to access the recovery, which i tried to, to perform a recent recovery to resolve this issue issue, I can't access the recovery partition. I beleive due to it being a Simple Dynamic Partition. (you can see this in the photo).
Back into DISKPART. Diskpart lists 4 partitions, (photo again), the 4th not listed in Disk Management. this partition only 184 kb with an offset of 233 gb. If i make this partition active, and list volumes, it appears my primary partitions are somehow attached to or are a part of this reference to the hidden partition. (this is the DISKPART screen listed in the photo.)
How do I restore my OS and recovery partitions to "Primary", and rid myself of partition 4, listed in DiskPart. I tried to delete this partition and DISKPART would not let me. I guessing since it has the reference to the Operating System. I'm thinking I'm glad I could not delete it.
Any help or responses would be much appreciated.
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