Trying to make a partition in Vista

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 11:08

Hey,

I need to make partition on my 250gb HDD so I can reinstall XP.

I've got Paragon Partition Manager and when I try to make a partition it comes up with this:

Any ideas on what's up? I only have the 1 primary partition so I don't know why it thinks I've got 4?

Cheers

jbloggs · 9 Feb 2008 at 11:24

Can you not use the partitioning utility in Disk Management in Vista?

Or I have found diskpart works well, when other things fail.

marc2003 · 9 Feb 2008 at 11:27

have you tried disk management? there really isn't any need for 3rd party software to do this. (start, search, diskmgmt.msc)

edit: too slow.

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 11:36

I tried Vista's disk management and it gives me practically no options at all. It says I can shrink it but comes up with an error when I try it.

Diskpart gives me this:

marc2003 · 9 Feb 2008 at 11:42

well there's your answer. you've already got one partition taking up all the space.

you'll need to shrink it using 3rd party software. make sure you have backups if you proceed.

failing that, re-install windows, delete that partition during setup and create a new smaller one, leaving room to create more.

i have 4 partitions on my drive....

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 11:50

marc2003 said:
well there's your answer. you've already got one partition taking up all the space.

you'll need to shrink it using 3rd party software. make sure you have backups if you proceed.

failing that, re-install windows, delete that partition during setup and create a new smaller one, leaving room to create more.

i have 4 partitions on my drive....

[IM]http://www.marc2003.ukfsn.org/upload/large/3c43129340f447fb1f532da37391b28a.png[/IMG]

What program would I use to shrink it then?

Re-installing windows isn't really an option due to all the hassle, I'd rather just buy another HDD.

Where is this 4 primary partitions thing coming from? I only have the 1...

marc2003 · 9 Feb 2008 at 11:58

Anders0n said:
Where is this 4 primary partitions thing coming from? I only have the 1...

well that program isn't giving very good error messages. i'd ignore that. what it really should be telling you is that you have 1 partition taking up all the space - something you would easily have seen if you had of used disk management in the first place.

as for 3rd party tools... i don't know. what about that paragon thing? not sure i'd trust it though giving it's dodgy error reporting capability. or try asking in the linux forum. i'm sure there would be a cd image you can download that will be able to resize your partition.

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 12:08

marc2003 said:
well that program isn't giving very good error messages. i'd ignore that. what it really should be telling you is that you have 1 partition taking up all the space - something you would easily have seen if you had of used disk management in the first place.

as for 3rd party tools... i don't know. what about that paragon thing? not sure i'd trust it though giving it's dodgy error reporting capability. or try asking in the linux forum. i'm sure there would be a cd image you can download that will be able to resize your partition.

When I've made partitions in the past (on xp) there has always been one partition taking up the all the space, I never had any problems then.

I take it the program was simply resizing the original partition then making the new one in the free space? If so, why can't I do this now?

marc2003 · 9 Feb 2008 at 12:18

Anders0n said:
I take it the program was simply resizing the original partition then making the new one in the free space? If so, why can't I do this now?

dunno. can't you use whatever program you used before then?

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 12:50

marc2003 said:
dunno. can't you use whatever program you used before then?

No because I'm using Vista now.

jeffa123 · 9 Feb 2008 at 12:57

All paragon software is Linux based. If you used their rescue media it is Linux based. I have Paragon Backup 6 & 7 I prefered PartitionMagic under its previous owners. If I have to move a partition around now and again I boot into a BartPE XP with PMagic 8 on it and re arrange my hardware from that. No FUFing around. Boot from the cd into XP straight away without having to install a piece of software on my system.
With Vista though you should have no problems but XP Computer management Buffer always requires 8mb of buffer at the beginning or end of a HD. It follows the same principals of Windows 98 and ME with Drive compresion with Vista you can compress your files on the fly. You may even save space by switching on file compresion right now if you are still having difficulties.

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 13:04

You can shrink the partition using diskpart but surprise surprise it wont work:

Screenshot of my limited options in Vista Disk Management:

marc2003 · 9 Feb 2008 at 13:14

Anders0n said:
You can shrink the partition using diskpart but surprise surprise it wont work:[/IMG]

try right clicking the command prompt and "run as administrator". but if disk management won't do it, i doubt diskpart will either??

Cosimo · 9 Feb 2008 at 13:22

Anders0n said:
You can shrink the partition using diskpart but surprise surprise it wont work:

Screenshot of my limited options in Vista Disk Management:

Why limited, Shrink Volume is available form the list of volume options.

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 13:31

marc2003 said:
try right clicking the command prompt and "run as administrator". but if disk management won't do it, i doubt diskpart will either??

Tried that, same outcome.

simulatorman said:
Why limited, Shrink Volume is available form the list of volume options.

Yeah but when I try it, this is what I get:

marc2003 · 9 Feb 2008 at 13:34

have you checked the event viewer to see if there is a more detailed error? also defrag the drive and run chkdsk from a command prompt to check for errors.

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 13:41

marc2003 said:
have you checked the event viewer to see if there is a more detailed error? also defrag the drive and run chkdsk from a command prompt to check for errors.

I had a poke around in the event viewer but couldn't find anything related.

Defraged yesterday, running chkdsk now...

Anders0n · 9 Feb 2008 at 13:49

Seems fine?

Anders0n · 10 Feb 2008 at 20:16

Bump!

marc2003 · 10 Feb 2008 at 20:32

did you try a linux cd like i mentioned earlier? they can resize windows partitions no problem. ask in the linux forum. i imagine there are some easy to use versions out there - obviously you'll need a blank cd and cd -writer. i'm sure you have that?