Help required regarding mergeing partitions in Windows 7

[zootfloot]

Hi,

I am having a little bit of trouble here, basically i have a dual boot machine, in the image below you will see the 2 partitions but you will also see an unallocated amount of space (about 100GB) in between the 2 partitions.

Partition D: is my XP Install, and partition C: is my Windows 7 install, the problem i have is that i can expand the D: drive to incorporate the spare 100GB, what it wont allow me to do is expand the C: drive to encompass that spare 100GB.

Any nifty little tricks that i can do to allow me to do this or am i stuck with this until i decide to bin off xp entirely and do a full clean install of Windows 7?

Thanks in advance for any help received.

 

[zootfloot]

You cant expand into C: because it contains the system boot records for both win7 and XP. You can't modify a partition that contains the boot record.
The 100mb partition was created by the win7 install and only contains the recovery apps should win7 have problems.

If your moving to win7 full time, then I would do a fresh install and wipe XP clean.

Thanks for the reply, but i am not sure that you understand what i want to do.

I only want to expand the C: partition to incorporate the unallocated 100GB of absolutely free space, thereby making the Windows 7 Partition approx 150GB in size.

This will leave me with 2 partitions, D: which will have my XP install @ 151.6GB, and C: which will contain my Windows 7 Install @ 150GB approx

 

[zootfloot]

A clean install is the only satisfactory way to sort out that mess of a partition table.

I suspected as much, luckily enough this is my first trip into dual boot land and is likely to be my last, it was all done as an experiment more than anything else.

 

[zootfloot]

I know that you want to resize your C: Win7 form 50gb to 150gb by using the unpartitioned 100gb space.

But C: is holding your OS boot records. Look at your screenshot and the green selected partition box. It says Healthy (Boot, Page File, Logicial Drive)

Boot is the important word here. It means that the windows boot records are currently stored here. Windows will not let you alter a partition that contains the boot record. Only a fresh install and deleting all the partitions and starting again from the windows set up.

Its a windows protection thing to not alter the boot record partition. If something goes wrong during the resizing to this partition. Your XP and Win7 would be unbootable.

Cracking reply, thats just put it in the exact terms i understand.

Time for the new HDD to go in and a new clean install.