Windows 7 - extending partition?

According to the help files the adjacent partition should allow me to be extended and absorb the partition next to it which is free space. See screenshot. Why does it not allow it?

Because it is free space within a partition and not unallocated space. Right click on it and delete the volume.

You wind up with Free Space when you have an Extended Logical partition which you delete sub-partitions within. As Wolfgang says, you need to delete the Free Space to get Unallocated Space you can extend a Primary partition into.

This is the result:

You have to have the "unallocated" space directly to the right of the drive that you want to expand. With your picture above, you could expand the D drive with the unallocated space to the right of it. However, if you want to expand the C drive...you would have to delete the D drive partition immediately to it's right to do it.

Oops...didn't read closely enough. As the message says, it sees this recovery partition as having boot files and won't let you change it.

You might have better luck with something like Gparted. It's a bootable .ISO that you can freely download to resize drives. It works outside of windows...so you aren't hampered with the limitations of Windows as shown above.

That is exactly what I want to do, but as my screenshot shows, it does not let me!
I didn't intend to expand the C partition. Also, it is not adjacent!
The D is where the restore points are kept, and I want to make room for more.
There may be a reason that the system doesn't allow it to be made larger?

Your best option there is GParted live for cd where you would start off by moving the factory image(D) partition all the way to the right being the rear of the drive. The move will take some time however while nowhere as long as a few hundred GBs!

The latest 0.6.2-5 release of GParted is seen at Browse GParted Files on SourceForge.net

The 3rd link in the green area "Newest Files" when clicking the "View all files" button will be for the ISO disk image you burn to a cd-r. If you need a burning program that works well on the 64bit 7 go for the free version of StarBurn at :: RocketDivision :: CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD recording and mastering

ImgBurn is what many will point to but was written for the 32bit XP and doesn't like the 64bit Windows too well. If you have a small usb flash drvie you can also see the disk image written to that to make up a boot from flash drive key and load GParted from that. The same shareware version of UltraISO used for 7 install keys will write the image when selecting the "bootable" option along the menu bar. http://www.ezbsystems.com/ultraiso/index.html

(comes in handy for writting live distros too )

FYI, restore points are stored on all drives and contain the information to restore that particular drive. In other words, if you have issues on the C: drive, more room on D: won't help you.

Make your Recovery Disks and then you don't have to worry about deleting the Recovery partition or moving it to the end of the drive. There are no boot files on it.

If you decide to move it, use free Partition Wizard bootable CD which is tool we use to help hundreds of similar operations here. Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

In this case, boot PW CD, rightclick Factory Recovery then Click/hold and slide the whole partition intact to the right end of the HD, click OK. Next rightclick Windows 7 partition and drag the left grey border all the way to the right to take up the space OK, Apply.

I use Partition Wizard
BEST FREE Partition Manager Software for Windows supports all 32-bit & 64 bit Windows No-server OS.

it is free and works great.
Read this link to move/resize partitions.

Resize Partition for Windows Server 2000/2003/2008 – Move/Resize Partition safely

Jim