Hello, before I start, this post will be vague on some levelnfor my privacy, thanks for understanding.
Now onto the main question, that being: how to preserve a very needed and fragile windows ecosystem on a laptop(need it to access certain services) while decreasing the amount the existing partition has and deleting another.
I have one drive 256 GB, with two partitions on it. C:/ and F:/ respectivley. C:/ contains all the windows 10 related stuffs plus few docs and programms, accounting for about 50 GB for some future expansion. While to all my knowledge that F:/ partition has no exact use. What I am asking is, is it possible to decrease the partition C:/ amount of space taken to about 50 GB, delete partition F:/ and then to populate all that with a separate Linux OS? While also not freaking out neither the BIOS nor the Windows as not to fail anything. I have full system and admin rights over it, and access to (though time is resetting to 2001 each time I start, afraid of touching it, doesn't affect windows) BIOS. Once again, it is very important not to break anything and to not freak anything out.
Any input is appreciated, thanks lots!
Okay regarding that, it does indeed seem to have a recovery partition of 100 mb, but the disk is separated into two 128 GB parts. So there are four partitions in total: boot? Partition, C:/, Recovery, and F:/ . And CMOS battery, I think it is more about me nor anyone before me setting up the time correctly, but it may be the battery indeed. By the start of the partition, you mean the left boundary of it as shown in the disk management thingamajig on windows? Thanks lots
EFI boot should always be first yes. Here's MS's article on layout: MS reserved may not exist and doesn't really matter. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/configure-uefigpt-based-hard-drive-partitions
Start of the partition is the left boundary as shown in graphical tools yes. It is the beginning of the partition. End boundary (right side) is irrelevant for booting and most operations and can be changed as desired.
Alright, I already have installed and partitioned everything needed. Thanks lots for your help in this matter, godspeed!