How do I change the system partition from XP partition to Win7?

[jamerst]

Hi,
I currently have a dual boot on my computer with Windows 7 and XP. Unfortunately as my computer is quite old my hard drive is not very big and with it being partitioned I am fast running out of disk space. So I tried to shrink the XP partition to allow me more disk space for Windows 7. Unfortunatley this would only let me shrink it by 83mb for some reason. I decided that since I barely use XP anymore that I would simply reformat the XP drive then try and merge them together. When I tried to format the partition it just gave the error "Windows was unable to complete the format". I then discovered in Disk Management that the Windows XP partition was the system partition which was causing the problem. Please help me with this issue before I run out of disk space!!

Thanks

 

[cyclic]

I think you should do it from outside XP, obviously and suggest install a partitioning tool, like Easus partition manager which I have used regularly. There are a number of good ones, all free including Gparted which you download and burn to a cd, boot to it and then no amount of system files can get in your way.

 

[jamerst]

Thanks for replying but can you reformat with EASEUS? I've used the programme before but I've never seen any options to reformat.

 

[DeaconFrost]

There are only very specific reasons a person needs to dual boot (and even then I'd suggest virtualization, assuming the hardware could handle it). In your case, is it absolutely necessary to run an 11 year old OS? You could save on space by running just Windows 7.

 

[jamerst]

Thats exactly what I'm trying to do now that I no longer use the programme that was incompatible with Windows 7. I got the partition to reformat using Paragon Partition Manager then shrunk it down with EASUES to keep it as a backup drive. Unfortunatley the system is still recognising it as the system partition so I will have to fix that later.