Dual boot original Vista with Windows 7?

Hi Shawn.
No I can't extend the partition.
I get through the first few stages, click install, click custom then I get to a page with disk 0 and disk 1 on it.
Disk 0 is my old HDD and has 2 partitions so it appears as 3 long boxes. Basically it has all my media stuff on it plus two now empty partitions ( 20Gb and 5GB) where Ubuntu used to be
Disk 1 Partition 1 (my newer disk) has 465GB total with 303GB free space. This has my system on it.
Under that are a series of choices: refresh, delete, format, new, load driver and extend.
Extend is greyed out and won't work. I can refresh, delete, format or load driver.
I tried the larger of the 2 old partitions on disk 0 and it says I can't install there cos they are not NTFS
Similarly I can't extend the large partition on disk 0.
I'm getting nowhere here.
Thanks for your help, John

Hi John ,

sorry you're having trouble with it - never come across any problems like that before.

Provided you have an uncorrupted GParted, here's the direct d/l for a tiny free isoburner - works great , just runs straight away - I use to burn iso to cd all the time

http://www.ntfs.com/downloads/Iso-burner.zip

This is the version of Gparted I have used - direct d/l

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gpa...7&big_mirror=0

Could you post a jpeg screenshot of the Disk Management window ?

To post a jpeg. , click Go Advanced at the bottom of this thread page and follow step 8 onward in this tutorial

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/14...ool-vista.html

Hope it helps

SIW2

Thanks for your reply SIW2.
I was just in disk management and I deleted the 2 partitions on disk 0 that used to contain Ubuntu so it now looks like this:

Could I install 7 on this space? Would I still get a dual boot? Do I need to format or something.
At least I've found some space but I can't understand why disk 1 won't shrink.
Thanks again, John

Looks allright to me, you would be better not trying to boot across drives.

Did you run off the cd that Easeus offers - and try booting in from that and using it to shrink your C drive. That should work. Might take half an hour if it needs to move system files.



SIW2

I actually purchased Easeus Partition Manager Professional on line (see previous post) when I try to boot from it and then shrink my disk 1 c: drive I get:

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

So that seems to be thirty pounds wasted.
Are you saying that putting 7 on disk 0 would not work?
Thanks very much for your support, John

Because of the way BCD operates, you can get issues booting across drives - some people get away with it - disabling hibernation seems to help.

Safer to install it on the same hd as your System partition.

Try clicking the tools tab in Easeus as per my previous photo.

Click Create Bootable disk - put a cd in the drive - do not format it , if Autoplay pops up, just close it. Easeus will burn it for you ( it already has the .iso inside the program ).

Boot in from that cd and you will see the familiar Easues screen - get it to shrink the C drive.

Ok. thanks, I'll try that and report back, J

SIW2! Fantastic (I think) Did as you suggested and it's taken all this time to give me this: As you can see I now have 26 Gb of unallocated space on my c: drive. After Easeus had done it's stuff ( I take back all those bad thoughts I had about them) it wouldn't boot so I put in my Vista disk and clicked on repair. this also took ages and I've rebooted twice and that is taking three times as long as it was. However I've now been trying to do this for nearly 10 hours so many thanks for your help. I'm assuming I can now go ahead and install the 7 Beta on the unallocatad space. Can't really believe I'm almost there, thanks, John

Hi John,

Yes go ahead and install 7 on that new 29gb space.

Easeus is fine - you didn't waste your money.

It's better to use the bootable disc for making changes to your System partition, and it should be fine to use it from within Windows for the other partitions.

You may find that Disk Management is able to operate on that C drive now.

Keep us posted about the installation.


SIW2

Well I finally did it and thanks to you SISW2 and the others on this forum. Everything seems a bit sluggish but both systems are booting. Just one fly in the ointment- I can't get on line. For some reason my router (BT Voyager 240) and Windows 7 don't play together. The ADSL light on the router goes out and Windows 7 tells me it can't find a connection. If I boot back into Vista I'm back on about 5mbps. How weird is that? I've been at this for hours and have to go to sleep. Tell you what though. It's been exciting. Thanks a lot for the help. I'll think about the router problem tomorrow (but it is a bit of a biggie) Best wishes, John