Vista - Merge Partition in Vista

I have a Dell E1505 laptop, which has been upgraded to Vista Ultimate.
Dell initially placed four partitions on the hard drive: Utilities,
Windows
C:\ drive, Backup and something called "CP/M, Concurrent DOS, CTOS".
I want to get rid of the Dell partitions and merge all disk space into
a
single Windows C:\ drive partition.

I've used the Vista disk partition utility successfully to delete/
merge in the two
Dell partitions at the end of the drive, but I can't get rid of/merge
the small Dell
utilities partition at the beginning of the drive (I can delete it,
format it, but I can't
merge it with the main partition). Can someone tell me how to do this?

Hi, Gus.

CP/M? Wow! How old is this computer??!!

I haven't seen CP/M in well over a decade! And what is Concurrent DOS or
CTOS? Do you do any work at all with those operating system? HOW did they
get on your machine? You say Dell put them there?

Several OEMs put proprietary partitions on computers they make and sell.
What is in those partitions? Is it important - to the buyer and end user?
Only the OEM (Dell?) knows for sure. Is it safe to delete those special
partitions? Or will deletion make your computer unbootable or unusable?
You REALLY need to ask Dell these questions!

Assuming that you get a green light from Dell Support...

If you have a place to back up the important (to you) files on those
partitions, then Vista's Disk Management can delete all of them except the
System Partition and Boot Volume (Disk Management will tell you which ones
those are). Then you can use DM to create one or more new partitions to use
the freed-up space. Or DM can "extend" a partition (Drive C:, for example)
to include that space. In the best of circumstances, Disk Management can
extend Drive C: to use the whole hard disk.

Gus

You need to use a third party partitioning program for a non-destructive
procedure like this. I recommend the Acronis Disk Director.

Disk Director Suite:
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/pr...directorsuite/