Solved Problem with hard drive space

[Sean Birt]

this is what ive got.

 

[Sean Birt]

here is another one, it dont look right to me.

 

[Sean Birt]

now i have unallocated space, i can extend E but not C.

 

[1Bowtie]

You are now going down a vary dangerous road, and if you can't get back where all this started your in trouble. Quit shrinking and extending now or a clean install of the os will be your only choice.

 

[Vertex]

You can right click at that unallocated space and New Simple Volume and create a new partition from there but you have the option to customize the size. You shouldnt have shrunk most of drive E:.

You can try deleting drive E: by right clicking it and Delete Volume, see if it becomes an unallocated space, colored black or free space colored apple green. Usually, its the free space that can be used to extend drive C:

Sorry if its causing you a bit of trouble.

 

[seavixen32]

You are now going down a vary dangerous road, and if you can't get back where all this started your in trouble. Quit shrinking and extending now or a clean install of the os will be your only choice.

I agree entirely.

Disk management is very restrictive in what it can do, and you being asked to carry out tasks that are more suited to Partition Wizard and suchlike.

For that you would need to download the Partition Wizard ISO and burn it to a blank disc then boot into it to carry out your partitioning tasks.

 

[Sean Birt]

hummm yes i know. i can extend E back into the space but i can not remove the drive letter. i do have windows7 disc but i have tried reinstalling it but the same happened with the drive space.

 

[1Bowtie]

You can right click at that unallocated space and New Simple Volume and create a new partition from there but you have the option to customize the size. You shouldnt have shrunk most of drive E:.

You can try deleting drive E: by right clicking it and Delete Volume, see if it becomes an unallocated space, colored black or free space colored apple green. Usually, its the free space that can be used to extend drive C:

Sorry if its causing you a bit of trouble.

If he has all unallocated space you have caused him to lose all his data on that drive.

 

[Vertex]

You can right click at that unallocated space and New Simple Volume and create a new partition from there but you have the option to customize the size. You shouldnt have shrunk most of drive E:.

You can try deleting drive E: by right clicking it and Delete Volume, see if it becomes an unallocated space, colored black or free space colored apple green. Usually, its the free space that can be used to extend drive C:

Sorry if its causing you a bit of trouble.

If he has all unallocated space you have caused him to lose all his data on that drive.

His drive E: is currently empty I suppose but maybe its just right to use a third party partition manager but some of those don't come free. Reinstalling, won't change the size of the current drive C: anyways unless he installs on the current unallocated space, then that becomes the new drive C:.

 

[seavixen32]

Partition Wizard does come free and is eminently suitable for partitioning a hard drive.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html

 

[Sean Birt]

downloaded pw and i think i may have got it, i moved E to the right and extend C into the unallocated space. looks better but back to front. see image

 

[1Bowtie]

Now will the pc boot properly, do you have your data, what is on the 3 gig partition, if yes to the questions make the c:/ drive active, right click the little 3gig drive and delete the volumn then extend c: to have the whole drive will be c:

 

[seavixen32]

It's looking better.

Boot back into Partition Wizard and remove the active flag from partition E then make the C partition active.

If you don't need the small E partition you can delete it and extend C to take up the slack.

Bowtie just beat me to it!

 

[1Bowtie]

It's looking better.

Boot back into Partition Wizard and remove the active flag from partition E then make the C partition active.

If you don't need the small E partition you can delete it and extend C to take up the slack.

Bowtie just beat me to it!

sorry bout that, but i think you know more about this than i do.

 

[gregrocker]

You'll need to recover the Win7 System boot files which have been derailed during install or repair to the right hand partition.

We know that you are booted into C because it has the label Boot.




But we also know by looking that the System Active flags are on the adjacent partition which means it has wrongly claimed the Win7 boot files. It may have been the only partition marked Active when it was installed or repaired causing this, since the installer or Startup Repair will (re)write the System boot files to the first Active partition it sees.

The solution to this which at the same time will open up the space to the right needed for C is as follows.

Mark C Active in Disk Mgmt or from Command Line as shown in this tutorial: Partition - Mark as Active

Reboot into the Win7 DVD System Recovery Options to run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times until Win7 starts and C contains the System Active Boot files.

Now enter Disk Management, Delete the partition on the right and extend C into the space:
Partition or Volume - Delete
Partition or Volume - Extend

 

[Sean Birt]

ill try that after ive finished avast scan. and see what happens thank you for your help, hopefully i will not need to call on you again haha thanks

 

[1Bowtie]

We really don't mind everybody here try's to help when they can.

 

[seavixen32]

Thanks for tidying up the loose ends Greg, it's appreciated: tried to rep you, but I got warned off for not spreading it around.

All being well Sean, you should finish up with a fully-working system.

 

[gregrocker]

Don't delete E until C holds the System Active Boot flags.

Somehow the Repairs that were run since your first post screenshot showing System Active flags on what is now E, have lost the System flag . The boot files should not have moved since they will be written only to the partition marked Active.

But I don't know why the System flag would disappear so don't delete any partitions until System Active flags are correctly on C.

You can use PW CD to mark C Active, click OK, then click on HD # to highlight, from Disk tab select Rebuild MBR, Apply both steps. THis may preclude the need to run Repairs from DVD as given in my earlier steps.

Before misguided repairs:


After misguided repairs:


The repairs were "misguided" because C was not specified to be marked Active which would guide Startup Repair to write the System boot files correctly to C when run up to 3 separate times with reboots. Leaving the Active flag on E will only leave the boot files on E since no guidance was given Startup Repair as to where they should correctly reside.