Windows 7: Partition : Recover Space Used by an Older OS

Most dual or multi boot setups have an older Operating System (OS) like Windows XP in the first position on the...

Ok Joan. Please let us know how it goes, or if you have any other questions.

OK better put an answer here, I already put a post in the Chillout room praising Ted but I should have answered here first I think

Everything went very well and Ted's tutorial was very easy to follow and made the whole experience a dream from start to finish, thank you Ted.

I downloaded a new copy of the ISO for Partition Wizard, thank you Shawn, burnt that to CD then just followed Ted's very detailed instructions.
Working with Partition Wizard was faultless, the longest time taken was the stage wiping the Vista partition, that took just over an hour, but it was wiping and writing zeros to a 158.75 GB partition, so I think that was OK.

I thought I was going to get peace and quiet to do this operation but the family came round this morning then while things were happening I was backwards and forwards watching the F1 qualifying session then had to stop for lunch but I got there and I now have a system where the OS is at the beginning of the drive and I don't have a dual boot machine, I'm very happy.

Thanks again Ted for all your work on making this tutorial so easy to understand and follow.

Hello Joan.



I'm very pleased to have been a help to you and I'm glad you had no issues, thank you again for the kind words and for the update on the situation.

That's great news Joan. Great tutorial Ted.

Thank you Shawn!

Nice one, BFK.

Thank you Ray!

I got very excited when I saw this tutorial, but now am at a dead end. In your example your Windows 7 partition is "Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition". In my case it says "Boot, Page File, Logical Drive" and upon right clicking on it I don't have an option to "Mark Partition as Active". What do you think is happening here and is my only option to format the HDD to get rid of Windows XP partition and reinstall Window 7? Help!

Hello lisior.








It is because the Windows 7 partition is a "Logical" and no Windows can boot independently from a logical partition; have a look at Option Four in this tutorial at the link below to see if you can mark the partition as "Primary" and then finish recovering the space.


Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

Thank you. This part worked. The part that did not worked is that after resizing Windows 7 partition to include spare formerly occupied by Windows 7 partition to the left and 8MB of unallocated space to the right (as per instructions in your tutorial), after booting all I got wasa blue desktop indicating that this copy of Windows 7 is not genuine... suffice to say I do have an original OEM version of the installaton disk and am in the process of installing Windows 7 from the scrach as we speak... so I'll recover the space I wanted just not looking forward to reinstalling every piece of software I had... in other words, results are less than satisfactory in my case... glad it worked for the others