Is there a way to delete the predesktop area on T41?

[Glaurung-quena]

I put an 80gb hard disk in a T41 and used the t41 system restore disks to install windows on it. It offered to create a recovery partition for me, I let it.

Since then I decided to use that hard disk in a T42 system, using T42 recovery disks. And the recovery disks don't work, because the T41 recovery partition (predesktop area) still exists on the hard disk, even after using DBAN Boot and Nuke on the disk. Somehow the T41 recovery disks managed to make the disk report that it is 76-ish gb instead of 80 gb, and stuck the recovery files on the inaccessible space, so it can't be removed using regular tools.

Neither Windows partition software nor Clonezilla are able to see the hidden partition. Every tool I've tried sees a 76gb disk instead of an 80gb disk. Does anyone know of a way to get rid of this super hidden predesktop area?