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Problem with installing XP on a Vista machine

(61 posts)
  • Started 5 years ago by Antman
  • Latest reply from The Geek
  • Topic Viewed 17051 times

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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

I read through the article about this and I'm very keen to get this to work.

I hit a snag when I used the Shrink Volume feature, it says I can only shrink 413MB, even though I have 24.95GB of free space. It says that the size of available shrink space can be restricted if snapshots or pagefiles are enabled on the volume. I don't know what this means.

I've taken a screenshot of the shrink dialogue for your inspection:
http://img11.imagevenue.com/im.....1151lo.jpg

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

Ant

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

I think the problem here is that your system restore is using too much space, or there are too many snapshots from system restore. You have a few options:

Disable system restore entirely
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....ows-vista/

Reduce the space of system restore (note you can also use these instructions to see how much it is currently using)
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....-in-vista/

Another angle you could take if you want is to use the gparted livecd, which is a bootable cd that lets you easily partition any disk... it's just slightly more technical, though.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

I'd probably also try and clean up some files... the disk cleanup wizard can help you with that.

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

Thanks for the speedy reply. I've reduced the space of system restore and after some disk cleaning I now have over 40GB of free disk space, but still can only shrink 413MB.

I'll look into that gparted livecd then, unless you can think of another reason why I am only getting 413MB after taking those steps.

Thanks again,

Ant

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I reset the system restore also, so it is only using about 130MB out of an allocated 430MB after creating a new restore point.

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

I'll look into that... you aren't the first person that has mentioned this to me, and I actually noticed it as well. I'll figure out why that's happening and write about it.

The gparted cd should definitely work, and is a useful skill to learn... it's extremely useful.

You should be able to potentially use the diskpart.exe command line utility to repartition the drive as well... it's just not quite as easy to use.

Posted 5 years ago #
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Scott
Scott
Posts: 5618

I'll second that. I had never burned an ISO disk or used anything Linux before I reformatted and set up a new partition for Vista.

Honestly, it was fairly Scott-proof, very hard to mess things up ;)

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

Just tried the gparted livecd boot and it didn't work. Wouldn't let me choose a new partition for my C drive. Just blanked out the 'New' option completely. I double-clicked on the C drive and it came up with a warning dialogue and a whole list of errors. I couldn't print-screen because I had to reboot, but I can do it again and write down the errors if that will help find out what is wrong.

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

You should resize the C: drive partition, and then you can create a new partition.

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

I should resize it to be the size it would be minus the size of the partion I want? So it's 149GB now, I resize to 139GB to get my 10GB partition for XP?

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

Exactly.

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

Awesomeness, I'll have a crack at that now, and thanks again for the help.

Posted 5 years ago #
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supermansghost
supermansghost
Posts: 350

You could also try using that diskpart.exe utility in vista. it's command line, so it's not that easy to use, but I've used it before with good luck

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

I'm not much of a geek in that respect, I'm afraid. I have no previous experience with command line stuff so I would probably do something horrendous.

Anyway, the gparted thing wouldn't let me resize the C: partion by any more than 8MB, which is weird. The error message said something about the nfts and that I needed to run check disk and reboot twice after that. Well, I've used check disk once or twice in the past so I entered chkdsk /f and it said it would schedule it after the next reboot. However, nothing seemed to happen when I rebooted, no check disk dialogue or anything. I just tried it again and same deal. I'm running Vista Business and I just Googled the problem and it seems a few others have had similar issues, but I couldn't find a solution. Does the chkdsk thing only work in XP?

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

Ah I can run check disk through properties/tools on the C: drive. I'll try that.

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

chkdsk should work in Vista as well.

I'll look into this for you. There's clearly something strange going on with the shrink disk function.

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

Ok thanks I appreciate that. I've had enough for today now so I 'll check back here tomorrow.

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

I know I said I was done, but I couldn't resist having a quick look at the diskpart.exe after I found a tutorial on how to use it. I listed my disks, and it says that I only have 9MB free out of the 149GB total size, which is about what gparted was saying. Just thought I'd mention this in case it helps.

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

I'm booting up my virtual machine right now to start testing this out =)

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

Hmmm just been reading about Virtual PC. Can I just use that instead to run XP on my Vista machine? I only really need XP to run my external soundcard which I record music with. There is no Vista driver software for it yet. Can I install it through Virtual PC and use the XP driver, possibly?

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

You could try that... I wouldn't bet on it working, and it might be somewhat slow.

Have you tried using the XP drivers in Vista for the soundcard?

Oh, and my Vista install is doing the same thing, won't let me shrink the partition. It's good, because now I can reproduce the problem =)

Posted 5 years ago #
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Antman
Antman
Posts: 164

Yeah I've tried everything to get that soundcard to work. It won't let me install the software to run it, or the driver itself. It's from Tascam and they've apparently had Vista drivers in development for about seven months now, or so they keep telling me.

Posted 5 years ago #
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