Can I delete the system reserved partition from 100MB

What is not explicitly mentioned is that in multiple HD systems, the 100MB will be written to Drive 0, no matter what drive is specified by the BIOS as the Boot Drive.

Also, if you have IDE and SATA drives, the 100MB will be written to the IDE drive even if the BIOS specifies the SATA drive as the Boot Drive.

MS seems to think that only 1 drive will be installed in a system during Windows installation.

Because the Boot Manager for W7 is stored in the 100MB partition is why either the user needs to be able to specify what drive it is written to, or if it is made at all. The default location for the Boot Manager needs to be based on the BIOS settings, not where MS wants to put it.

My PC could not boot at all until I forced W7 to install without the 100MB partition. My Boot Drive is my 1st SATA drive, and not the drive the 100 MB partition was written to (and thus the Boot Manager).

MS knew this since at least RC, but has failed to correct their error in thinking.

This is the only major fault with W7 so far.

The screen shot and the info are excellent. Your solution is so very simple.

But first to answer some of your questions, not in any special order. The only reason a hard drive (your external drive) would have or need an "Active" partition is if at one time a OS was installed on it. Even if the OS is deleted, the "Active" status remains. If the external hard drive and an internal hard drive (drive 0) are connected to the system when an OS is installed on the external hard drive, the Windows 7 installer will, by design, look for the "Active" partition on the FIRST drive in boot order (drive 0) and place the boot code there. If it does not find an "Active" partition it will use the first empty space available. So If there was empty space on Drive 0, then the Windows 7 installer would have by design created the 100MB partition there.

If you do not need to boot to the external drive, I suggest you remove the "Active" tag as it may cause complications later.

SIMPLIFY the installation of any OS by only connecting the hard drive you are installing to.

You can only extend a partition into EMPTY space. You must shrink a partition first to create the empty space and then extend the next partition into the empty space. However, the Windows Disk Management Utility is limited in what it can do. For example it can not extend a partition to the LEFT. You need a third party utility like Partition Wizard for a complete utility.

Your solution is simple and can all be done from Windows 7. First create a simple volume in the unallocated space at the front of the drive. Make it exactly 100MB, give it a drive letter, mark it as "Active", and format it as NTFS. Next assign a drive letter to the current "System Reserved" partition, any letter is ok. Now copy all the files from the old "System Reserved" to the new "System Reserved". You can do this because you gave them drive letters. When the copy is done, go back and remove the drive letter from the "Active" "System Reserved" partition and reboot. If there is any problem rebooting just do the "Startup Repair".

After reboot, you can delete the old "System Reserved" partition and extend C: into the empty space.

Cheers!

Robert

iseeuu--Here is a screen shot of my Computer Management window

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/1673/computermanagementf.jpg

Disc 0 A 1TB internal hard drive.

Unallocated space, from which I assume I could create a Simple Volume and then extend C: into it.  A right click on it offers the options to create a Simple Volume, Properties and Help.

C: contains my Windows7 Ultimate 64bit installation and all my working files. 

System Reserved.  A right click on it offers only to change Drive Letter, Shrink (about 15MB), Properties and Help.

D: is empty.  I have only recently received this PC and have not set everything up yet.

Disc 1 A 500GB internal hard drive.

F: contains a copy of the most important files from C:

I did not have my external hard drive connected when I took the screen shot.  It contains three partitions--all of which are Primary and one is Active.  None are Boot or System. And there is no System Reserved partition, although this is the drive in which I created the partitions.  I do not know why creating partitions on the external drive should have created the System Reserved partition on Disc 0, but this is how I remember it.

A right click on C: shows that the option to make it Active is available, though I have not tried.

My only real concern about having the System Reserved partition--especially where it is-- is that it prevents C: and D: from being contiguous and therefore (I assume ) is the reason Extend Volume is disabled for each.

I look forward to your further comments and advice.  Thank you.