Dual boot original Vista with Windows 7?

I've been browsing around and this seems to be a problem for a few people.
One suggestion was Easus Partition Manager. I downloaded a zip file of that but when I've extracted and tried to install as administrator and I get a warning that I am trying to install it on a 64 bit system. I click ok but nothing further happens.
I've done this several times and the Easus download page assures me this is the 64 bit version but it won't install.
At the moment I'm downloading MEPIS 7 which is also supposed to be 64 bit but it's taking a while.
This is turning out to be quite a hassle. Am I going about it the right way?
cheers, J

Well I'm lost. I got MEPIS but then I realized it's a whole Linux OS so I don't really want to mess with that.
I downloaded EASUS partition manager professional edition and that enabled me to drag an unallocated space from the left of the diagram of my c: drive.
I'm not sure this is what I want but I tried to apply it and get told I have to buy the product before it will work.
Am I going about this the right way. help, John

John,

I think the problem is that a partition requires contiguous allocation on a drive. If you have re-used a drive heavily prior to attempting a partition shrink the storage management software won't be able to identify sufficient space despite the fact your standard capacity meters shows loads.

In the first instance try to defragment all partitions on the drive where you want to create the new partition. Then re-try the shrink.

I have two HDDs in my desktop tower as I use the second 300GB drive for Vista backups in case my primary fails.

When I first tried to create the Win7 partition there by shrinking the single backup partition I had the same problem as you.

The multiple backup iterations were filling the drive anyway so I also took the opportunity to reformat the whole drive prior to re-partioning it. This may be more extreme than you are comfortable with doing, but it made creating the new partition easy.

(NB: I re-created the Vista backup in my new smaller backup partition prior to installing Win7!),

Hi johnwillyums,

Here is a tutuorial - you shouldn't need to do the startup repair mentioned as installing Win 7 obviates the need for that.

Using GParted to Resize Your Windows Vista Partition :: the How-To Geek

Hope it helps

SIW2

Hi All and thanks for the replies and suggestions.

Unfortunately I've just had an incredibly frustrating afternoon and having wasted 6 cds, 2 dvds and 30 GBP I am no nearer creating a space for the Windows 7 Beta

I tried GParted, downloaded the latest iso folder and then struggled to burn it to a disk.
I have Easy CD/DA converter which I use all the time so I tried to create an image disk in that. It wouldn't do it.
I then downloaded IMGBurn and ISOImageBurner.
IMGBurn told me that it could not burn this type of file.
ISOimageburner appeared to do it but I have now tried about 6 disks and several permutations of the contents of the GParted live iso folder and they just won't boot.

With the disk that appears to have burned correctly it starts to boot and then I just get a black screen with a flashing cursor top left.
This goes on for ages until I get fed up and eject the disk at which point it boots into Vista as normal.

Frustrated by this, I went back to Easeus Partition Manager professional Edition 3.
This appeared to be very straightforward so I purchased it on line.
With this I get a UI with both my HDDs on it and options to resize/move my partition.
I dragged the cursor from the right hand side of the c: drive creating about 25Gb of unallocated space and clicked apply.
This resulted in a reboot and the partition manager appeared and 3 task bars began moving across as the task was completing.
I've tried it several times and each time I get this failure message:

"Failed to complete the batch operation.
Message (4101):failed to quarantine system partition"

I'm really fed up about this and have had a totally s**t afternoon plus it looks like I've wasted my money on this software.

anyone got any ideas where I'm going wrong?
Thanks, john