Repartition When Upgrade From Vista?

Wife has a preloaded Vista laptop which I'm about to upgrade to Win7 (purchased an upgrade DVD so it's legal). Her HDD was set up with 'system' and 'data' partitions ... the 'system' has 12Gb free and the 'data' has 94Gb free.

I'd like to repartition when upgrade is done (custom install?) ... is that possible?

I saw a post (Upgrading the Upgrade after Activation question) that says something about using a 2nd upgrade of Win7 to clean install (after the initial upgrade from Vista to Win7) ? I don't mind doing that, if it's necessary, but can it be done at the first upgrade?

Win7rap, I think you are confusing two things, let's try to clarify
- The thread you referenced is basically doing a clean install from an upgrade DVD. That is needed if, for example, you have a copy of Vista or XP (mandatory for y9ou to be able to use the upgrade key without violating the EULA) but want to clean install Windows 7 rather than upgrading. You do a clean install, do not enter the key then do an upgrade on top of the same Windows 7.
But I understand you just want to upgrade from Vista, correct? In that case, none of this is needed.

- Upgrading from Vista only requires running set up from Vista and following the instructions. While a clean install is usually better (to clean the junk we all accumulate over the years like those lost registry keys or the startup program that one has no idea what they do) you might want to upgrade in order not to have to install all your programs again.

- When you say "repartition" I understand you want to change the partition sizes, is that correct? I wouldn't try to do it while upgrading (I don't think it is possible either). Just upgrade and when done you can use windows 7 to shrink any partition you want: Partition or Volume - Shrink or resize them: Partition or Volume - Extend

If you need to move a partition to the left (e.g. shrink the first partition, move the second to its left then extend the second) you will need a third party software like Partition magic. I would avid trying to move the system partition, Windows usually doesn't like it. It is usually OK to extend it to the right.

Finally, a couple of recommendations (without making this tooo long):
- Please please please BACKUP YOUR PERSONAL FILES. Upgrading the OS is like performing brain surgery on yourself. Things can go very wrong and it is better not to find out you can't recover your files if you don't have backups
- Make a system recovery disk for your Vista or a system image in case things go very wrong and you need to revert to Vista.
- Be patient and ask for help if needed. We will be here!

God luck and let us know if it works or if still any doubt

Walter

My assumption you wanted to upgrade was incorrect. So indeed you just need to follow the instructions for a clean install ("custom install" option) and go from there

That is actually the preferred method

Good luck!