Can you not select / delete these partitions when doing a clean install from the vista disc?

Of course not, else I wouldn't have asked here.
When doing a brand new Vista reinstall, the Vista DVD offers to create C (and D if I want to), but it never sees that the small, nameless, 47 Mo partition--one of the two created by the Dell MediaDirect DVD the time before--is already there.
I've been asking on various, and everybody seems to think that I'll be needing some special tool to access that small partition created by the Dell MediaDirect DVD last time I installed. I was hoping people on these Dell forums would know just what I am confronted with--and how to get away with it.

...Well, thanks for reading me though."

To Natakuc4: 

As explained hereabove, I wish to get rid not only of MediaDirect (which I already have) but also of the small, nameless, untouchable 47Mb partition that was created the last time (along with a bigger other one which disappeared easily) and remains on my hard disk even after a thorough Vista reinstall--kindly read the top post.

To dgkpcon:

I do just that, but once Vista has been re-installed and I go check the volumes, here is that same unnamed, untouchable, 47 Mb partition which reads:

"Type :" basic - "Statut :" Sound (Configuration EISA).

The reason I am here is that I can't seem to get rid of it.

In addition to my first post, hoping to make things even clearer:

I just managed to connect my former hard disk to my laptop (which, it would seem, was not in as bad a state as Vista said it was) through a linking kit.

Using Vista's tool that monitors the storage units (hope it means something put into English?) I can access it and see it bears the following partitions:

1. one nameless, 84 Mg "Type :" basic - "Status :" Sound (Configuration EISA)

this one couldn't be touched in any way
2. C which I created

3. D which I also created

4. a second, nameless, much bigger one (2.01 Gb) "Type :" basic - "Status :" Sound (Principal partition) ; this one can be deleted.

As explain in the top post, when installing my new hard disk I installed Dell MediaDirect and so I also got two same, nameless partition. I then reinstalled Vista without Dell MediaDirect, and then found that the smaller partition has resisted the reinstallation of Vista and can't seem to go away.

This is why I came here in the first place.

I hope I have made myself cristal-clear by now!

Thanks for reading all this, and thanks a lot in advance for sharing your ideas about how to get rid of the small, nameless, untouchable partition that Dell MediaDirect left behind.

Greetings from France.

I keep it on my own machine a 0.48Gb is not a big waste and one day diagnostics may be useful.

Are you planning installing multiple operating systems, is that why your concerned about partitioning?

To natakuc4:

So I just read somewhere else, thanks. Now why won't it go away from the previous install? Or would you think I should keep it anyway, since even though I don't use MediaDirect I do use the Dell machine, and the diagnostic partition applies to the machine?

What I also don't get is that it seems that first partition was created with the MediaDirect DVD, is that right? I think those two things--the system utilities on the one hand, the MediaDirect stuff on the other hand--should be kept seperated and treated seperatedly by the Dell installations. Now thinks get mixed up and a user who's a Dell first-timer like me gets to feel that he isn't at home in his own computer, since Dell does things to the hard disk that can't be undone (by me, for now, that is).