What is the operation that you are performing and what program are you using when you get this error

Maybe this helps http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....-problems/

cobija, hello again! We need to get a picture of what Windows thinks is on your hard drives. If you can post a screen grab of the Disk Management screen, that would be ideal. Otherwise, you can use diskpart.exe commands to find the same information in a Command Prompt window, then copy and paste it here. Here are some useful commands in diskpart:

> diskpart
DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk 0
DISKPART> list partition
DISKPART> select partition 1
DISKPART> detail partition
DISKPART> help
DISKPART> exit


here you go scott:

LIST OF DISK MANAGEMENT
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/9273/1stvo8.jpg

AFTER PARTITIONING 17.2GB FOR XP (TEST FOR SMALLER PROBABLY GONNA GO 50GB IF IT WORKED)
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/3476/2ndhh3.jpg

THE ERROR AFTER TRYING TO DO NEW SIMPLE VOLUME TO THE 17.2GB PARTITION
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/5381/3rdgq9.jpg

AND HERE IS A PICTURE OF MY PARTITIONS IN DISKPART.EXE
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/4610/4thhb5.jpg

It appears the issue you have is the maximum primary partition limit. There can only be 4 primary partitions. Thus you couldn't create a 5th primary partition.
The 4th primary partition shown in green is a special primary partition called an "Extended Partition" that can hold an unlimited amount of logical partitions.
The reason it's done this way is because when people wanted to add a 5th partition they wanted to keep compatibility with older partitioning tools. Thus the "Extended Partition" with Logical Partitions in it.

i put in the xp disk and boot off it and everything went fine until i got a blue screen saying blah blah problem :0x0000006F (0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000,0x00000000)

i read it could be a bad xp disk. i will try my other one i found in my garage =]

ok. I deleted the green one and I need a little more clear instructions. I tried shrinking my OS hard drive. What am I doing wrong? And I want about 120 GB for xp (ive got the room.

I have the Vista recovery disk that came w/ my comp (vista came preloaded) is that enough?

So what im suppose to be doing is partitioning a portion of my original primary parition (C:) right?

I think Blue is a primary partition so that sounds right. So right now you have about 252GB primary partition with Vista and a new 36GB primary partition for XP?
Are those two the partition sizes you want?

Ok. What happens when you right click on the Windows Vista partition and click Shrink?