http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ How-To Geek Forums Topic: Need help with a stuck partition en Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:23:00 +0000 http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/need-help-with-a-stuck-partition#post-27569 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:37:15 +0000 geek860 27569@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>I used media direct to partition the drive. It gives the option when installing it on a blank drive before it formats, so I thought that using it would make sure everything went smoothly. How wrong I was... </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/need-help-with-a-stuck-partition#post-27566 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:25:44 +0000 ScottW 27566@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>What program did you use to create the partitions? Normally, if you want to dual boot Vista and XP, you should use Vista to create partitions so it will recognize them. Now, your XP partition is "free space" not unallocated or a primary partition. So, I guess Vista can't work with it.</p> <p>You mention Dell Media Direct was installed before Windows. I'm not sure how your Media Direct is configured, but from what I've seen researching for another thread, Dell takes up a lot of partitions for itself. These partitions might interfere with your plans. See this page for info on Dell partitions:<br /> <a href='http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm'>http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm</a></p> <p>See this article on why Vista has a problem shrinking a partition and how to get around it:<br /> <a href='http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/working-around-windows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/'>http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/working-around-windows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/</a> </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/need-help-with-a-stuck-partition#post-27561 Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:58:43 +0000 geek860 27561@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>I swapped out my 160GB HD in my laptop with a new 320GB. I used Norton Ghost 14 to transfer everything over as an image, and windows itself works fine. However, for Dell's MediaDirect, I had to install it before windows. So, I inserted the CD, formatted the drive, and partitioned it so I had 160GB for vista, and about 130 for XP (which I want to dual boot). After everything was transferred, it booted up, and is now working fine, but disk management shows that the partition I left for XP is classified as 'Free Space'. I can't delete it or create a new simple volume. I can't shrink it or expand it. I can't expand the vista partition so it swallows the whole drive. It's stuck, and it's taking up 130GB of my hard drive.</p> <p>Calls to dell got me doing a whole bunch of odd things like taking out the physical memory, rebooting countless times, etc. </p> <p>For the record, when I try to delete the partition or create a new simple volume I get the error of "There is not enough space available on the disks to complete this operation". I have 3GB of DDR2 RAM, 67GB free on my main partition and 136GB open on the stuck partition. I've tried altering my page file, even giving it up to 20GB of space. Nothing has worked. This is just another stupid windows error message that doesn't tell you the actual error. Space is definitely not an issue.</p> <p>Has anyone else had this problem and has anyone found a solution? </p> <p>I REALLY don't want to reformat. </p> <p>Thanks </p>