Hello

My laptop is set up with a dual boot system with Vista and XP Pro.

I used Vista's disk management to create the partitions.

I want to increase the size of the xp partition by shrinking the vista partition. In disk management I am able to shrink the vista partition. This creates some unallocated space shown on the right of the vista partition. The xp partiton is shown on the left of the vista partition. When I right click on the xp partition the option to extend the partition is greyed out. Is this because the partition is not adjacent to the free space?

How can I extend the partition?

Many thanks

Volty

You cannot do this using Windows.

You have a choice of many partitioning tools.

I like GParted myself.

Thanks for your reply Jephree

At first i didnt understand what you meant but I found this on the gparted website http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/tips/gfs.htm
and i think it confirms that you can only extend a partition into free space which is adjacent - and yes Windows cannot do it.

I will check out gparted and give it a try.

cheers
Volty

Hello again

OK I used GParted CD to resize my partitions. I have a dual boot system with XP and Vista. I shrunk the Vista Partition and increased the XP partition.

When I rebooted I got a Windows error saying the installation had to be repaired so I used the vista installation DVD to repair the Vista boot. It did not seem to recognise the XP installation also.

Anyway now Vista works but XP gives me the same error - insert installation disk to repair.

I'm not sure what to do now.

Should I use the Vista DVD to repair the XP installation ?

or use the XP cd to repair the XP installation?

Or do something else ?

Many thanks

Volty

Hi Volty

You need to use your Windows XP CD to perform a repair within Windows XP, then XP should give you the dual boot option if XP is contained in the first partition of the boot drive and each OS will be recognized. It is better to create a partition and resize if necessary before you install an OS to that partition .

Cindy X

Thanks for your reply Cindy.

My concern is that by repairing with the XP disk it will leave me able to boot into XP but not into Vista.

When I set up the dual boot Vista was installed first and I installed XP second. I then had to use VistaBootPro to create a boot manager which could work with both.

At the moment VistaBootPro sees the XP partition as Boot Drive : Unknown.

I guess I will just have to try this and see what happens.

Fingers crossed!
V

Hi Volty

It sounds crazy but you may need to repair XP then perform a clean install of Vista, but as you say lets see how XP takes, good luck honey.

Cindy X

mmm....that was a bit messy.

I used the Windows XP disk to repair the installation and it worked but not very well. Internet explorer didnt work. Couldnt update .NET. Couldnt run Vistabootpro. Installed Firefox and tried to update Explorer but it kept crashing.

Repaired Vista and that installation is fine........

May do a complete Restore of disk image from external hard drive and accept the limited partition sizes.


oh well.......


V