Will I be able to use pqservice partition after I re-installed windows?

batusia

Hello, 
PC - Acer aod270.
There was windows 7 starter installed.
I reinstalled windows 7 professional. I installed it to disk C. I left pqservice partition and system partition (100mb) alone, didn't formated or anything.

Will my pqservice partition be usable or should I reinstall windows professional again and format everything to not have unusable free space?..

finlux

Hi batusia

 

If you leave the PQservice partition untouched, then you will be able to use it if you want to restore Windows 7 Starter back to your PC.

 

If you erase the partition, then no, it will not be able to be used.

 

If you need the extra drive space, make sure you make recovery disks/USB drive beforehand, so you can reinstall Windows 7 Starter if you wish.

finlux

Hi batusia

 

If you leave the PQservice partition untouched, then you will be able to use it if you want to restore Windows 7 Starter back to your PC.

 

If you erase the partition, then no, it will not be able to be used.

 

If you need the extra drive space, make sure you make recovery disks/USB drive beforehand, so you can reinstall Windows 7 Starter if you wish.

batusia

Thank you for the answer, that helped me a lot.

Well, is there any way I can make such partition? With my prefered windows back up? I mean, same as before - invsible to users and solely used for that purpose.

finlux

As far as I'm aware, you cannot make your own version of the recovery partition. But you can make an image back up of Windows 7, exactly how you want it to be, I.E. with all your programs/updates etc installed. So whenever you need to reinstall Windows, in a short space of time your PC will be ready to go.

Go to Control Panel, Backup and restore, create a system image.

This will back up your version of Windows EXACTLY as it is now. Ideally back up to an external hard drive or even DVDs.

Hope this helps!

miguel69

1. If you wish to be able to go back to win7 starter you can do one of two things, leave the pqservice partition as is, or use a program such as Macrium Reflect or Acronis to make an image backup of the partition to an external drive then you can recover this space for use in your new system.

 

2. You can use these same programs to make an image copy of your new OS once you get it set up as you like it with all the drivers and before (prefered) or after installing apps to use as your new system baseline restore file.  You can also use this as one of your backup systems to restore in case of a system/drive crash.