Welcome to the forum.

What is the exact message you receive when you try to delete the partition in disk manager?

"The disk configuration operation did not complete. Check the system event log for more information on the error. Verify the status of your storage devices before retrying. If that does not solve the problem, then close Disk Manager and restart it, or restart the computer."

The volume has a blank label and the file system heading doesn't say anything like NTFS or FAT; it's just blank. The size is 7.45gb with 100% free. This laptop (averatec) didn't come with recovery discs and doesn't have its own recovery partition, so is the only recovery option? And what good is an empty recovery partition? I'd rather have a recovery disc stored in a safe place and have the extra space on the laptop, but even if I'm able to delete the partition how easy is it to reallocate that space to the original partition?

Thanks for any help

Hey no_towel_lint!

Have you tried to reformat it instead of remove it?
Once you have been able to reformat or to delete it, you can create a new partition, of max 7,45 GB.
Resizing other partitions is only possible using software like PartitionMagic.
Blue