Trying to shrink partition

Hello,
I have a new computer with a HD of 916 GB (approx). I am coming from XP, and have used Paragon's partitioner for years. I like to use programs included with an os if possible, and have read good things about Win7's capability with partition management.

Yes, I hit the wall of not being able to shrink past about halfway, due to unmovable files. I've been reading a lot, and found this thread. It tells me to turn off System Restore and virtual memory. Well, I tried turning off System Restore: that was not enough: I still can't shrink appropriately.

My next step according to that thread is to turn off virtual memory. With XP, I usually did not allow Windows to manage virtual memory, but specified it myself. I'm a little scared about turning it off altogether. Is that safe to do? I have barely anything installed, mainly just the OS. If I should not turn it off, then what size should I use? My OS is Win7 64 bit, and my ram is 8gb.

One of the reasons I need to be careful with what I do is I wasn't able to create bootable restore disks. But that will be in another post, once I get this going

Wow, that was a fast reply! Thanks Jonathan for the welcome and the reply. That makes sense to shut off Hibernate... I'll try this tomorrow when I have the Memorial Weekend to tinker.

Use Perfect DIsk 10 trial's Offline Defragger to move System FIles blocking shrinkage.

It is likely free Partition Wizard bootable CD will shrink it now anyway, but as with all partition managers besides DIsk Mgmt, you need to back up your files because there is a risk of failure in Resizing operations.

However in hundreds of resizing operations we have helped with here, there hasn't been a failure yet with PW which is by far the best manager for Win7.

linda092 said:

Ok, here is where I am. I turned off Hibernate (but I'm on a desktop so I'm not sure that did anything), turned off System Restore, and am using no page file. I rebooted to make sure my changes held, and they did.
I got both programs recommended here. Perfect Disk defrag is a nice program, and it defragged everything except 2 blocks labelled as Metafiles.
I then used Partition Wizard as a bootable CD, thinking that would be best, and it said my drive was too fragmented to do as I wanted.
So I booted into Win7 again (checked again to see the unmoved files according to Perfectdisk, they are still sitting there in the middle of the Drive Map. Tried to run PW again, and it said it had to run on boot, so I let it. Same message: I need to defrag.

Apparently those 2 blocks are hanging me up. When I look at what files they are, its a list of a bunch of them. Most have the $ in front of the name.

Any suggestions?

Linda,
Strange since PerfectDisk is a good defragger.

My favorite defragger is Contig Contig


Run until is show 0 files defragged. Probably the third run.
use following command lines:
c:
cd \
contig -c -q c:\


If after this Partition Wizard still says you need to defrag, then I've another trick up the sleeve.

I just tried the contig advice (I have used Paragon many times in the past, but since I have already installed PW I don't really want to be trying tons of new software unless necessary)

It didn't seem to do anything. Here is my snippet:

Oh, and here is a pic of the two blocks that won't defrag...