Eliminating the partitions that came with laptop

[Rdesai7677]

I just upgraded my OS from Home to Pro version and forgot to delete the partition before the upgrade.  Now both partitions are greyed out and won't let me delete the partitions - any ideas on how I can delete these partitions?

Thanks

Rushin

[WAWood]

@Rdesai7677 

Older HP laptops have four partitions preloaded, not two -- Boot, OS, Recovery, HP_TOOLS.

Newer HP laptops have two or three partitions -- System Reserved (ESP), OS and, sometimes, Recovery.

I don't see how yours has only two if you think the upgraded added another partition -- it would have at least three -- and if you just start deleting what you consider extra partitions, you could easily render it unbootable.

Please provide us the details of what is being shown in Disk Management.

[Rdesai7677]

Correct - I have 3 partitions - should have been more clearer.  1 = Disk 0 with 240MB / 2 = Disc C where my OS and other data is / 3 = Disk 4 896MB size.  Disk 0 and 4 are grayed out and not letting me delete or perform any other action.

[WAWood]

@Rdesai7677 

Let's get the terms straight because we're mixing disks and partitions.

What MS mistakenly calls disks are actually partitions.  What the rest of us call disks are physical drives -- where '0' is the first drive, '1' is the second and so on.

So, you have one drive with four partitions, right? Or do you have two drives, with two partitions each?

[Rdesai7677]

Correct one drive - 3 partitions - i am trying to get rid of partition 1 and 4.  When I right-click, all options are grayed out.

[WAWood]

@Rdesai7677 

OK -- thanks for the clarification -- but I can't see the image you posted.

Can you provide a text description of the partitions?

[Rdesai7677]

Thanks for your continued help.  Not sure if I can find out text descriptions but below is a full screen shot:

[WAWood]

@Rdesai7677 

OKI, but now the image is showing -- and partition 1 (260MB) is the EFI System Partition (ESP).  If you remove that, your PC will no longer boot.  So, leave it alone.

Partition 4 is the HP Recovery partition and while you could remove that, if you make your own recovery media, there is little gained in the process because it is only 142MB in size.

Also, you DO realize that the OS partition is BitLocker encrypted, right?  If you have not done so, go into BitLocker Manager functions and create the recovery key USB backup and print that off.  If you do not do that and the PC updates the BIOS, you will be permanently locked out of your PC.