Solved Unable to shrink partition over 4Gbs

[Fireater989]

I'm trying to create a 20Gb partition to dual boot Windows 8 dev build. I have 82.6Gb of free space on C:, the one I'm trying to shrink. When I start the wizard, it says only 4272Mbs are available to shrink. I included a pic of the Disk Management window

 

[Brink]

Hello Fireeater,

Since you already have 4 primary partitions on the hard drive, you will not be able to create anymore without deleting some of them. I would not recommend to delete any of them since they are for your HP Windows 7 factory recovery though.

If you like, you could use the option in the tutorial below as an alternative to install Windows 8 to a VHD at boot to be able to dual boot your Windows 7 and Windows 8 instead.

Windows 8 VHD - Create at Boot to Dual Boot with

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Fireater989]

Thanks, I think I'll try that

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome.

 

[Fireater989]

I made the vhd and have tried installation for the 2nd time, but it hangs on 3% of the expanding windows files part. Im going to let it run overnight, but thats pretty unusual, even 7 didnt take this long

Edit: after a lomg time(not overnight) i got an error saying windows cannot install required files. The files may be corrupt or missing. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error code: 0x80070017

 

[Brink]

This usually means that you have a bad or corrupted Windows installation DVD/USB. You might create a new one from a new download of the Windows 8 ISO to see if that may be it.

 

[Fireater989]

I thought that was it, but I had the image with the dev tools and it was too big for a DVD (I had also tried using a USB drive but booting with the drive skipped over it for some reason) so I downloaded the x64 image and burned it directly to the CD. I have another problem though and I might have to start a new thread: When I rebooted, I got nothing but a black screen. I logged in and had nothing but a cursor. I've heard of the Black Screen of Death before but I didn't think that was it. I opened Task Manager and tried to start explorer but got an error saying "Class not registered". I opened IE and downloaded the Black Screen "fix" from Prevx and that did nothing. I booted using Last Known Good Configuration and that did nothing.
Before trying to install Win8 I made a restore point and wrote a disk image to an external HDD using Drive Image XML. I ran this program to restore the image, but I can't overwrite the System Drive... which kind of defeats the purpose. Do you have any suggestions on how to restore?

Edit: I'm in the middle of trying to make a BartPE which has a Drive XML plugin so I can boot from a CD