Can't partition under Vista

Arterion · 16 Jul 2008 at 09:24

Hi all, having a strange problem with what is basically a new PC running Vista Ultimate...The built in disk manager won't let me shrink the partition on the primary disk (incidentally the ONLY disk/partition) to accommodate a second one and I can't for the life of me see why.

This worked fine on my other rig which is also running Vista Ultimate.

Anyone able to shed some light?

bledd · 16 Jul 2008 at 09:42

how much space is it using up?

what i do..

disable system restore
run cclenaer (to remove temp files)
do a defrag

use gparted live cd to partition

Arterion · 16 Jul 2008 at 09:51

CCleaner and defrag just been done and system restore doesn't pose a problem when partitioning the other PC so I don't think it could be that. Yeah ok I could probably use that CD to do the partitioning but there's a reason it isn't working under Windows and I'd like to get to the bottom of why. Thanks though

bledd · 16 Jul 2008 at 10:04

could be system restore is taking up loads of the disc, no 2 pc's are the same

Arterion · 16 Jul 2008 at 13:39

Maybe, I'll turn it off and give it a shot.

swinnie · 16 Jul 2008 at 13:46

bledd. said:
use gparted live cd to partition

+1 brilliant software, did the trick for me when installing Linux when it couldn't read the disk, and my friend rates it for issues under Vista.

.Griff. · 16 Jul 2008 at 13:46

I had the same problem trying to shrink my partition through Vista. I "would" allow me to do it but only by a few meg. Disabling System Restore allowed me to shrink it by a large amount but still not what I wanted.

Never got it resolved and gave up.

Mattus · 16 Jul 2008 at 18:45

Disable system restore, disable the page file, disable hibernation (powercfg -h off) and try again.

Arterion · 16 Jul 2008 at 21:21

Mattus said:
Disable system restore, disable the page file, disable hibernation (powercfg -h off) and try again.

Ok, did all of this and it gave up around 50 gig of the drive in question for me to play with (it's 160 overall I think).

New problem: It claims there isn't enough space on the drive to complete the operation...this clearly isnt true, I think I'm using about a third of it at the most and I only wanted a partition of 15Gb (I tried 10 as well just for the sake of argument).

Any more ideas?

ANDARIAL · 16 Jul 2008 at 21:27

Format in another pc then re-install?

Arterion · 16 Jul 2008 at 21:39

ANDARIAL said:
Format in another pc then re-install?

Bit drastic don't you think? There's GOT to be some way to sort this out without essentially giving up and starting again with a fresh install...

bledd · 16 Jul 2008 at 21:42

maybe try the solution posted in the first reply

Arterion · 16 Jul 2008 at 21:58

Looks like I may have to, I'm just the type to like to solve a problem rather than work around it...just what I'm like!

bledd · 16 Jul 2008 at 22:34

i'd've taken the advice of someone sooner than 12 hours after they kept suggesting it.

mmorpheus1 · 16 Jul 2008 at 23:25

Its Micro$ofts 'If its broke dont fix it' policy

seriously though , i always use third party software gparted should do the job

Arterion · 17 Jul 2008 at 02:02

bledd. said:
i'd've taken the advice of someone sooner than 12 hours after they kept suggesting it.

I meant no offense, like I said, I was looking for a fix rather than a workaround- I'm just that type of person...if something's wrong I like to know why.