System reserved partition

When I installed Windows 7 Professional on a clean hard drive - last fall. The install creadted a hidden partition called "System Reserved Partition-_L" on my hard drive (just before the C drive). Inside it are 2 folders "BOOT" and "system volume information". Because of this extra partition I am unable to make a Ghost 15 image of these partitions and restore them to another hard drive (removable drives) for backup.
After trying all I could think of, I reinstalled Windows 7 Professional from the original DVD onto the fresh hard drive. This time it put the "BOOT" folder inside the root of the C drive.
I checked with another user who installed his Windows 7 Pro last fall and he also has the Reserved partition but on a another user's new laptop the Boot folder is again inside the C drive - where I would suspect it should have been all along.
I callled Microsoft tech support and got the run around that my install was over 90 days ago and I would need to pay $59.00 for a POSSIBLE answer to that problem. I hung usp because I know it will be a reformat reinstall answer.
BUT has Miicrosoft made a downloadable patch that works now during the install to fix this and if so can I get it and or safely use it?
I would like to delete the Reserved Partition and get my boot file into the C drive but not screw up my MBR etc.
Thanks. Any help would be appreciated.

Use a partitioning boot disk to create your partitions before you install windows. If you use Windows to create your partitions the reserve partition will be created. If the partition already exist before the install starts, there will be no changes to your partitions. Simply choose which partition you want to install to.

Thanks for the feedback.
I reinstalled on a partioned hard drive and had to reinstall over the is install to get Windows to activate.
If there is the seperate 100meg partition Ghost 15 won't restore C to another drive. Bad if your drive goes south.

Why couldn't a WEindows tech offer that answer without wanting to charge $59.00.