Can't resize my partition

Once you have the PW Boot disk, follow these steps for Partition Wizard Resize Partition Video Help.

I would keep the Samsung Recovery partition if you are still under warranty and might need to recover a Clean Reinstall to factory condition to ship it back for repairs as they sometimes require. If not under warranty and you have no interest in the Samsung bloatware, then you can delete it. This is best done during a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 to reinstall just the OS without the crap.

With the bootable Partition Wizard disk I'm still only getting the Delete, Copy, and Properties options. All the other options are greyed out on all three partitions. I'll try a bootable defrag program, but is there anything else I could try? What about the rebuild MBR option?

I tried IObit Smart Defrag pre-boot and I still can't resize the partitions. Any other ideas?

Also just wanted to warn anyone that might be thinking of trying Smart Defrag that it installs malware no matter what you do during installation. I've been trying to get rid of it all for 2 days now and I still haven't gotten it all off. And don't download it from Cnet because that installs an adware called Coupon Companion. Will be using Softpedia from now on.

Nayr747 said:

. The computer came with a backup partition that I incorporated into a single partition a long time ago, so that's the only thing I can think of that could have screwed something up.

Exactly what did you do with the Recovery partition? It must have messed up the partition table badly because I've never seen this type of failure before.

It's very unlikely Recovery will any longer run so I hope you made your Recovery media before ruining the partitioning. What I would do at this point is wipe the HD with Diskpart Clean Command to clear the partition table and boot sector of all code, then Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which is a vastly superior install to the factory preinstall which no tech enthusiast would run.

Trucrypt < maybe messing things up?

If not done already, 1st make sure you have a good backup (on external media) of everything important, proceed with the experiments only after that.

If Truecrypt is in use, take a look in TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source Disk Encryption Software - Documentation - Issues & Limitations

Encrypted partitions cannot be resized except partitions on an entirely encrypted system drive that are resized while the encrypted operating system is running.

gregrocker said:

Exactly what did you do with the Recovery partition? It must have messed up the partition table badly because I've never seen this type of failure before.

From what I remember, it was just a backup partition for Samsung Backup (or something like that), which was one of the bloadwares from the factory. Since I already backup to an external hard drive, I didn't need the backup partition taking up about half the space on my HDD. So I think I just used disk manager or one of those partition programs to delete the partiton and increase the main partition's space. Or maybe I just combined them somehow. I can't really remember.

gregrocker said:

It's very unlikely Recovery will any longer run so I hope you made your Recovery media before ruining the partitioning. What I would do at this point is wipe the HD with Diskpart Clean Command to clear the partition table and boot sector of all code, then Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which is a vastly superior install to the factory preinstall which no tech enthusiast would run.

I know it would be better for a lot of good reasons, but it just seems like a huge nightmare. I had to do that once on my old laptop and it took days to reinstall Windows, then try to find all the right drivers, etc., then reinstall all my many many programs, then redo all my customizations. And I'm worried that it still won't work right after all that. If I go that route, should I create a disk image in case it doesn't work?

alphanumeric said:

Trucrypt < maybe messing things up?

4wd said:

If Truecrypt is in use, take a look in TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source Disk Encryption Software - Documentation - Issues & Limitations

Encrypted partitions cannot be resized except partitions on an entirely encrypted system drive that are resized while the encrypted operating system is running.

I do use TrueCrypt, but my entire system is encrypted rather than a particular partition so it shouldn't be a problem according to that. I would decrypt but it takes about 15 straight hours, so I'm trying to find an easier solution before I try that.