Total size before in MB: 258132
Size of aviable shrink space in MB: 0
Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB: 0
Total size after shrink in MB: 0

Hmm. Sounds like maybe a Extended Partition got created again somehow as that says "Logical Drive".
It also appears the "Shrink Volume" function in Vista isn't going to work for some reason. You can try using gparted to shrink it instead. See http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....partition/

Also it's a little past 1 am here (Central US) and I'm going to bed. I'll be back tomorrow if you still need help.

when I use Gparted, it doesnt let me resize the primary even after i delete the XP one that I made. here is the error

http://img95.imageshack.us/img.....366xw0.jpg

zoom in to remove the wavy lines. sorry my camera's flash is always on. The blurred spot says ntfs resize v1.13.1 (libntfs 9:0:0)

cobija: Alright I'm caught up now. What I see in the gparted screen shot is that it is finding file system errors on your Vista partition. This is usually benign and can be fixed with chkdsk. However, you can't run chkdsk on the Vista partition when you boot from the OS on that partition because then it's in use. You need a command prompt in either Windows PE or Windows RE. Boot from your Vista CD and select "Repair", then select "Command Prompt". Now you can run the command "chkdsk /F c:" which will fix the filesystem. Repeat that command until it runs clean and says "no problems found". Here is a KB article about Windows RE:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

EDIT: just had a thought -- Windows RE might re-label the drives and call RECOVERY c: and call OS d:. Make sure you are running chkdsk on the Volume "OS" of size 252 GB, whatever letter it is assigned.

I tried the first step and I think it worked. it said windows found no problems then at the very very end (about 10 lines after that) it says failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50. But i just tried Gparted and no errors!!

cobija, I'm not following entirely. You say gparted ran without errors. Did you change the partitions with it?

In the screens you posted, I see the Disk Management window and it looks like the C: partition (VISTA) is still 288 GB. Do you get that error message on the second screen while trying to do the shrink operation from the first screen?

Aha, I see there is a problem with all of this color-coding. Dark blue *is* for primary partitions. The lighter, medium blue is for a logical drive. Note that logical drives can only appear inside of an extended partition which will always be outlined in green. That's the medium green, not the light green used for free space inside of an extended partition. <sigh> Take a look in the View menu under Settings -> Appearance to see the color assignments.

If you are still planning to install XP on that partition, you can stop the format now. XP can only be installed on a primary partition, as jd2066 already mentioned previously.

You can delete the logical drive, then the extended partition which will then become unallocated space (black). Then right click in the unallocated space and choose New primary partition. Then you should have a primary partition for XP in dark blue with no green outline.

After you delete the logical partition you should be able to right click on the free space in the green area and click delete the remove the extended partiton. Then you can create the primary partition.

Ok, now that the extended partition is gone when you select "New Simple Volume" it should create a primary partition instead of a logical partition.