How to shrink existing partition in Win XP so I can dualboot XP with 7

[paparazzo79]

Hi guys.
Merry X-mas and Happy Ney Year to everyone.God bless you.
Anyway I got myself this old retro Sony Vaio P edition mini netbook with only 1GB of RAM and Win XP preinstalled
Since most of the apps are no longer supported I wanna install Win 7 alongside XP (dualboot), but I am unable to resize partition with diskpart,
Could anyone guide me which is the easiest and safest way to resize partition (keep current data intact)?
I see many of the programs do that but out of your experience which one to try and guide please?

 

[Megahertz07]

diskpart
select vol c
shrink desired=20000
exit

The commands above will shrink the C: partition in 20G and leave it as unallocated space .

Boot from Win 7 installation drive and select the unallocated space to install on.

 

[townsbg]

You might not be able to resize from within Windows. You might have to boot into the windows 7 installation disk and launch command prompt from there.

 

[siliconbeaver]

I did try this setup last weekend just for curiosity.
It's doable.

1. Install Windows XP 1st.
2. download and run epm (EaseUS Free Partition Manager for Windows), to partition XP OS disk. in my test, 40GB was allocated for OS Windows 7 install.
3. Install Windows 7. when done, PC start menu, 1st choice is "Previous Windows" (i.e. XP. obviously Windows 7 cannot tell XP, names it this way). 2nd/default choice is Windows 7.

It's pretty easy and straight. no issues except activation (either XP or 7).
in XP Mode, I can read OE (Outlook Express) email. but no way to access any GPT disks. they are under "GPT Protection".
in Windows 7 mode, can access all disks, MBR and GPT, including SSD on NVMe slot.


Now, how to backup this dual setup?