Using GParted to Resize Your Windows Vista Partition
One of the more advanced options for resizing your Windows Vista partition is to use the GParted Live CD, a bootable linux CD that takes you straight into GParted, the great linux utility for managing partitions. The problem is that if you resize your boot/system partition, you will be completely unable to boot without repairing windows.
First make sure that you have a bootable Windows Vista installation DVD, as you will be unable to use your computer if you don't. Next, download the GParted Live CD and burn it to cd.
Boot off the GParted cd, and you will see your hard drives in the drop-down list. The first drive is typically your boot drive, but you can check the Flags column to make sure.
Next you'll need to right-click on the partition and choose Resize/Move from the menu.
Now you can either use the New Size textbox, or just click and drag the partition to make it smaller (or bigger). When you are done, click the Resize/Move button.
This doesn't immediately apply the changes, though. You can make other changes to your partitions and then when you are finished click the Apply button.
Depending on the amount of data and the speed of your computer, it can take quite a while to resize the partitions. On my computer it took more than 30 minutes.
Once it's done, quit, remove the live cd and then reboot your computer. Unless you are very lucky, you'll be greeted with this horrible error message saying "Windows Failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause."
File: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Status: 0xc0000225
Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.
Here's a screenshot of the error, but don't worry, we'll fix it.
Insert your Windows Vista installation dvd and make sure you boot off it. At the welcome screen click the Next button.
On the next screen, click the "Repair your computer" link in the lower left hand corner.
The system recover options dialog will show up, and will ask you if you want to Repair and restart, which we do.
If you happened to click the View details link you'll see that the error is "Windows Device: Partition=Not found", which indicates the problem is the partition that we resized.
Your computer will reboot, and you'll see Windows Vista in the list although it now has a different name indicating that it was recovered.
When Vista first starts up, it will start running a check of the disk. Whatever you do, don't hit any keys here because we want the system to check the disk.
Once it's done it will reboot, and you'll have Vista back up and running again!
If you want to rename the Windows Vista entry in the list back to normal, you can use VistaBootPro.
This is a handy trick, so long as you're dealing with IDE hard drives. If you've got SATA/SCSI drives, then your mileage will probably vary.
I'd say Partition Magic is a much better option, though!
I have used GParted to move my partitions around at least twice on my new-ish Vista laptop, but I've never had the problems you mentioned on reboot. Maybe I am very lucky and obviously YMMV, but I wanted to leave an encouraging note here so this might seem slightly less scary.
BTW - I also recommend the free ImgBurn to burn the ISO to disc after you download it. When I first started using GParted years ago, it took me forever to find a free ISO burner.
@Barron - Way to go, idiot! You totally jacked up that link! ImgBurn is at www.imgburn.com
C'mon guys, what happened to good old Alcohol [http://www.alcohol-soft.com/], for ISO burning?
@Shayon - Alcohol is not free.
I agree with Barron…
While Alcohol was very useful a few years back, just about every cd burning tool can handle ISO images now, so why not go with a free tool?
I use www.burnatonce.com for burning CD images, simple, and has the detail if you want it.
Does GParted wreck XP installations too?
Using Partition Magic or any other third party tool that requires an installation doesn't always work. Why? Because if you're out of hard drive space (hence, have the need to expand your partition) then you may not have room to install the software to do the resizing for you.
GParted, or a similar tool, on a live CD is a workable solution in this scenario.
Partition Magic doesn't require installation, it comes on a bootable CD.
Besides, it's really unlikely your disk is so full that you don't have the
extra 50MB of space needed to install it, or can't free up at least that
amount of space by deleting temp files or moving files to a USB drive.
I had this problem with an hp, but when I inserted the Windows Vista installation dvd and made sure I booted off it, no welcome screen appeared… The installation dvd had been sent to me directly from the manufacturer… Really no chance with Windows Vista.
I have about 12 gigs of free space, booting from the live cd, but it wont recognize the free space on my HD. in the section labeled 'used' there is a blank. In the section labeled 'partition', next to my hdd, there is an exclamation point.
Why not just use Ubuntu live cd so you can do file management and check file in file manager as well? (GParted is included with Ubuntu LiveCD) As well as that there is an option of trying out Linux as well… And web browsing in firefox…
Personally I prefer QTParted, which is simmilar but you have to download using Synaptic Package Managmer, becase it is easier to use. But QTParted is included with Kubuntu live cd and Knoppix CD. (it is a kde package)
Enjoy..
The latest, greatest (and allegedly final) PartitionMagic *DOES NOT WORK WITH VISTA*.
Not only will it not install (as expected), it pops up an error on every physical drive with ANY Vista-like partitions.
On a new PC, that was naturally ALL OF THE DRIVES.
Also, according to Wikipedia, the clowns at Symantec aren't going to be making any new versions of PartitionMagic, EVER.
Oh, and BTW, Vista has a 'resize partition' in its 'Disk Management', but it's fickle. For instance, on a 150GB partition with 30GB on it, Vista wouldn't let me shrink it below 90GB. Nothing I could do within Vista would make it any smaller. Then it wouldn't format the newly freed space. Then it wouldn't reclaim the newly freed space back to the partition it came from. I had to use another fdisk-like thing to nuke the bad partition it made, and then I was able to install Ubuntu.
Really good trick but I have problem, I try it on my Dell Inspiron 6400 with SATA HDD and wanted to resize 137GB drive to 57GB but now it has been running for more than 24Hrs but still don't finished!!! is that normal?
it worked finally, took about 3 hours to change the partition of my 500G sata HDD, and maybe i was lucky, no vista repair. there were a minor issue however, my HDD appeared to have a 5MB unlocated area, dont know why. But it's ok, as long as the rest of the drive and data on it are fully functional.
I have a 200gig SATA hard drive and am running Windows XP. I am a newbie. My computer has a single partition which has 200gig but only displays 178gigs. I thought I knew what to do but based on the above comments I not quite sure now.
I think I would like to resize this partition so I can create additional partitions. Wouldnt this help my system boot faster? Well anyway I couldnt quite determine which I should be doing or if I should be doing both processes. And if thats true which should I do first? It appears from all of the comments I have read this is quite simple in Windows Vista but what about XP? Are there additional tools I should be utilizing? If so which ones? Are there free tools available (not demos).
Works like a charm. Thank you!
The Gparted LiveCD did not take me straight to the GParted screen, instead I was confronted with a list of options to configure. I chose the auto-configuration after much deliberation, and it proceeded with some form of installation - which I decided was too great a rish to take. So I quickly exited it. I would like to say that I had earlier partition my 100GB hard disk that originally had XP into 4 partitions and had VISTA installed on one and XP on the another. The third was reserved for DATA and the fourth is the HP recovery partition. So I dual boot VISTA and XP. Could the state of HD be responsible for the behaviour of the GParted LiveCD in my case?
Can someone offer a solution?
@Mascot9
It was working normally. It is a LIVE CD which means it loads into memory from the CD and runs from there without leaving an installation behind on your hard disk. The install into memory was what you saw happening. The Auto-configuration option worked fine for me on XP.
Many thanks to dean186 for the clarification.
I am shrinking my hdd in my laptop from 175GB to 145GB in order to install Linux.
I am using GParted as LiveCD.
It took about 2 and a half hours to complete a copy process "using a blocksize of 128 (or 512 I don't remember exactly) sectors" and now it requires 3 more hours to complete a similar process "using a blocksize of 2048 sectors". How long is this supposed to last? Is it normal?
I just can't understand this blocksize/sector thing.
Thanks for the help! Worked perfectly. I had resized my Vista partition down to 100 GB so I could install Ubuntu in the other 100 GB. In the process of doing that now. Thanks again!
@Milad: I have exactly the same laptop as you and I'm trying to resize Vista from 117GB to 68GB … it has been running for like 24 hours and not even half done. It took MANY hours to "read" the sectors and now its copying 143892929 sectors using a blocksize of 64 sectors. It's going veeeery slowly. If I move the mouse around, it does it very sluggishly. I pressed CTRL-ALT-F3 to get a console up and typed in 'top' to see what activity was going on with each process and gparted is using up roughly 40% CPU and very little memory. I've no idea why its taking sooo long to finish! Any ideas??
@Milad and Gonzalo: I do not know for sure, but the symptoms you are describing indicates that the disk driver the GParted Live CD used for your machine were using some kind of compatibility mode and did not offer optimal access to your harddisk.
Partition magic is useless in MisFits (MSFT: OTC) Newest Version of the newest OS VISTA, codenamed LONGHORN.
They never provided any CD/DVD for the VISTA OS with our new PC.
Anymore ideas on even Using the XP Pro OS and doing partitions then moving the Hard Drive into the other unit(s)?
i was trying to use Gparted on dell notebook I1520, 250 GB SATA HDD,( OS C: 220 GB, recovery D: 10 GB ). I did copy-burn image of Gparted .iso on Roxeo creator and the file extension in the CD is gparted.dat .Once i booted through Gparted I could get the list of Hard drives on my system. There is a triangle just before the file system NTFS of my OS and when i chose to resize/move and in the screen it shows minimum size and maximum size as the same - 225595 Mib.
And the space preceding and space following is Zero and the new size is 225595, which i was not able to modify.When i tried to check the information tab given below the resize/move it says some sectors could not be read. I think if i press the check button it would veriify the file system and attempt to repair. I did not know what to do. I do have the vista OS cd with me and other utilities reqd. i want to make a partition and load Linux and see what it is. ( I'm a newbie). Can some one help and guide me through.
Thanks in advance. Prakash
Using gparted on Vista
You need to make sure that whatever version of gparted you are using has been compiled with the latest version of the GNU NTFS tools. i.e. Version 2 .
Get to a command line on the live CD and type in:
#ntfsfix -V
if you don't see version 2 don't use this version of gparted on Vista NTFS volumes.
www.partedmagic.com has a free live CD that has the right version of the tools on it and a version of gparted that works with Vista NTFS volumes.
Also running.
#ntfsfix /dev/xxxx
fixed up the bad things that the earlier version of gparted did to my Vista NTFS volume partition.
Be careful! Note that sometimes a recovery PARTITION, such as those on some Sony Vaio laptops, are NOT a substitute for recovery DVDs. They do not offer the same repair options as standard recovery DVDs. I might also add that I had a recovery DVD from a manufacturer, and it never offered me the option to repair my computer, as shown in the pictures above. It just wasn't there, and I ended up being forced (kind of, not really) to have the DVD wipe my hard drive and reinstall Vista. I should also note that I was using GParted from the Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10) Live CD, so this may have caused the problem.
I wanted to leave an encouraging comment. I just re-partitioned the hard drive on my new laptop (Vista). It did everything in 15 mins and everything works like a charm.
Thanks.
I haven't tried your fix although it seems ok, but since I had a working XP version I ran the EasyBCD Reset BCD Storage option and that fixed it for me. Thanks for your tutorial though, at least it gave me a second option!
EasyBCD 1.7.1
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
Dan
I used the very handy parted magic livecd to boot and allow me to use gparted. I find this one more robust than the gparted livecd.
Ok. So what do I do if my computer says "Failed to save startup options." at the system recovery options dialog? I have the following details
The following startup options will be added:
Name: Windows Vista ™ Home Premium (recovered)
Path: Windows
Windows Device: Partition=C: (102398 MB)
A copy of the current boot configuration data will be saved as:
F:\Boot\BCD.Backup.0001
When I push Repair and restart, it tells me Failed to save startup options.
Am I SOL?
I have the same error as Trino (tried to repair, but then it says "Failed to save startup options.") Anyone have any suggestions?
Worked great for me but …
I lost my system restore points. Without any panic, I decided to create new restore points and make sure volume shadow copy runs. However, I am not able to create new restore points. When I go to the "System Protection" tab in "System properties", it gives and error saying "Unexpected error in property page, The volume shadow copy service is not working. For more information view event log (0×81000202)"
I am able to start the VSS service but when I try "vssadmin list shadowstorage", it says "No items found that satisfy the query".
This will be a big issue because, windows won't update if it cannot create a system restore point.
Anybody know how to work around or fix this. One option is to disable "Volume Shadow copy" service but I do not want to do that (for obvious reasons).
Suresh Joel, I would be willing to bet that to make this work, one will have to turn off volume shadow / 'restore points', erase the restore points (maybe in reverse order), resize, then re eneable the restore point system. Better have everything the way you want first
I'm trying to make a laptop configuration that boots up a regular user w/o a password running LoJack from the on disk bootloader from a small partition if my laptop is stolen, but boots a Full Disk Encryped (FDE) TrueCrypted (http://www.truecrypted.org/) much larger partition using a bootloader from a USB stick. Seems to be the only way the combine the two programs since they both load into the boot sector.
SOME laptops have a (Lojack or other tracking software) BIOS agent, but it has to be engineered into the laptop with enough room in the BIOS.
Everything is fine now!
Dennis - Thank you for your post. After several hours of frustrated poking around - I found out that actually I messed up (kindof - its never totally my fault - you can ask my wife).
I resized my "J:\" non-vista ntfs partition along with resizing the "C:\" vista partition.
When GParted resized "J:\" , it assigned a different drive letter ("G:\").
So, after I rebooted in to Vista (I did not know then that "System Restore" was not working), I changed the drive letter back to "J:\" (since I had symbolic links to that drive).
That messed up the Volume shadow copy - shadow locations somehow. (So, its MS's VSS fault actually, it doesn't associate drive letter change with the VSS shadow locations).
I changed the drive letter back to what GParted set it to ("G:\") and "System Restore" was happy and I could create a new system restore point.
Many thanks for the post and help!
It didnt work for me. Gparted resizes the Vista partition, but it took 3 hours to resize a partition of 320 Gb to 100 Gb. Then Vista didn't boot. And the windows Vista CD Rom didn't offer the posibility to repair. Al I could do is reinstall or repair bij doing a full recovery, which gives me the original 320 Gb partition.
Vista itself is capable of resizing its own partition when you use the virtual disk manager. And it worked in two minutes and left Vista bootable and running after a reboot. After that I use Gparted to make partitions for my Ubuntu installation and it works!
all is fine with a sata hdd but what if I have a RAID 0 configuration? I suppose Gparted will only see the 2 disks! Is there a way for me to extend C without formatting and reinstalling?
I read your how-to on resizing Vista partitions with Gparted to find out if Gparted could "slide" a Vista partition, and the closes statement I could find in your treatise was: "Now you can either use the New Size textbox, or just click and drag the partition to make it smaller (or bigger)." I believe you meant: "…drag the partition's left and right borders…."
Otherwise, the only hint of sliding was the screenshot of the dialog box which read: "Move /dev/hda1 to the left and shrink it from 30.05 GiB to 15.47 GiB"
So, can you explicitly say that Gparted (in it's latest version) can "slide" a Vista partition, that is, move its start position?
Tim Daniels
Yeah Tim that's the question! Cause if it cant do that we can just use the built in Vista manage discs tool.
Actually thats how I did it in the end. I deleted the whole D partition and I expanded C.
I do not have a vista installation DVD since the Vaio notebook came preinstalled with it. I do have the recovery DVD's though. Is there a way to partition my disk?
I just booted the live CD trying to re-partition a SONY desktop because the C drive is running out of space, I noted another small 5GB partition, I gather that is the recovery partition and I should not mess with it. The problem is that I am unable to resize the C partition (labeled boot). Even when I resized the D partition to make it smaller by 30GB to make space next to the C, it simply labeled the new space as an unallocated new partition. I must be missing something when it comes to using this program, any help or pointers will be greatly appreciated.
Hi, I have tried resizing Vista using Gparted Live and after which vista fails to Boot.
I tried inserting and booting from the Vista DVD, however after loading Windows file from the DVD, the blank screen appears and still fails to boot. Is there anyway to solve this problem?
I use Gparted 0.31, not sure if it have GNU NTFS tools v2 as stated by Wsmith. Is that the cause of the problem?
Check out this thread.
http://gparted-forum.surf4.inf.....php?id=431
Rather than using Vista DVDs (which depending on manufacturer may not have the repair option), create a Vista Recovery CD or DVD using the .iso from the following link (or using SP1 if you have it):
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/.....-download/
Just completed the resizing (from Ubuntu 7.10 CD GParted), ran into the error on booting, and used the Recovery CD for the fix - worked like a charm.
Hi guys
I have windows vista on my new laptop and i burnt gparted live cd to a cd and it boots from cd but never takes me to the partitioning page and take me to other pages that i dont have a clue what they are, is there anyone who could help me with that?
Cheers
You don't want to use a non MSWindows tool in an attempt to get every last byte out of the disk. If you do use another tool, there are some limitations.
Various boxed computer systems have a hidden recovery partition somewhere on the disk that may appear to be unallocated space. The one I got last weekend has about 30GB at the front of the disk. You don't want to do anything to this area.
I seem to remember starting about WinXP, the last MB or so of a drive is used to store some additional information, without doing anything to allocate it to any partitions.
Important: quotes and commentary from kb/931854: The partition that hosts Windows Vista may disappear if you use Windows XP to create a partition on a computer that has both Windows XP and Windows Vista installed. CAUSE: This problem may be caused by a [sic] error in Logical Disk Manager. If the partition that hosts Windows Vista was created during the installation of Windows Vista, a 1-megabyte (MB) alignment boundary is created on the partition. This alignment boundary differs from the alignment boundary that is created by Windows XP. Therefore, when you use Windows XP to create a new partition, the different alignments may cause this problem. Commentary: You have to be careful what you create.
From past experience hibernate could be using a preallocated file or a hidden disk area.
Within those limits, I have already shrunk the preinstalled C and D partitions. I planed to slide the D partition to the end of the drive and place two additional partitions in between: F & E. The resulting partition order will be C, F, E, and D. C is the OS partition, D is a Data Partition used by some of the vendors system backup tools. I don't expect it to have much access. Historically F has been the drive with the family's files. (I don't use "my documents"), and E is an alternate application install and scratch partition.
Since Vista did not offer a partition mover, II decided to target a partition order of C, F, D, and E with Vista disk manager so that I would not have to move any partitions. However, VISTA refused to add my planned E partition, saying that space was not available on the drive, despite the ~ 50GB chunk at the end of the drive.
After thinking about it, I realized that the hidden partition and partitions C, F and D are probably all primary partitions that completely fill the 4 available entries in the master partition table (the partition table in the master boot record), and the "not enough space on the drive" was probably master partition table space.
However, http://windowshelp.microsoft.c.....3.mspx#EFB says "When you create partitions on a basic disk using Disk Management, the first three volumes you create will be formatted as primary partitions. Beginning with the fourth volume, each volume will be configured as a logical drive within an extended partition." If this is the case I don't understand why VISTA refused, saying that 50GB wasn't enough space on the drive.
My next plan is to try this again after downloading the updates that were not installed, and if necessary install SP1 by hand. If that does not work, I will burn a current Knoppix drive and use one of the parted front ends to create an extended partition and see if Vista sees it. If Vista can't create a logical partition inside the extended partition, then I will use Knoppix again to create the logical partition.
I hope this helps.
Wish me luck.
Hi guys
I bought a dell laptop with 320 GB HDD and the OS is Vista Home Premium.I have tried to make c drive smaller and make another drive, i have used partion magic, partition commander and the shrinking feature of vista itself but none of them wokrd, partition magic and partition manager resize my c drive but when i want to create a partition they tell me that there is an error and i should use a 'Repair Tool' to fix the problem. Shrinking feature of vista says that the operation has failed and i should read the help and as i said i boot my computer and it doesnt take me to partitoning page. I guess the problem is that recovery drive that one the guys mentioned but i dont know how i can fix it, i would apperitiate if someone can help me.
Cheers
Che
Hi guys
I bought a dell laptop with 320 GB HDD and the OS is Vista Home Premium.I have tried to make c drive smaller and make another drive, i have used partion manager, partition commander and the shrinking feature of vista itself but none of them wokrd, partition magic and partition manager resize my c drive but when i want to create a partition they tell me that there is an error and i should use a 'Repair Tool' to fix the problem. Shrinking feature of vista says that "The attemped operation is invalid.Either the parameters specified are invalid or the operation cannot be completed on the selected object. Refer to Disk Management help for assistance on the correct use of the attemted operation" and as i said i boot my computer and it doesnt take me to partitoning page. I would apperitiate if you could help me.
Cheers
@Hooman (and others),
I had very similar problems with a Dell desktop. Vista was installed on a 500GB drive, but I wanted to split it for dual booting. I tried various partitioning programs but eventually ended up with a non-booting PC. Since the Dell was supplied with a proper installation DVD, I decided to start from scratch, removing both the recovery and Vista partitions and creating two new 250GB partitions. I'm now quite glad that I've done this because it means I now have a clean install without all the free extras from Dell. I plan to use HyperOS to run Vista and XP (and ..?).
P.S. The installation DVD said it was unable to repair the original mess (perhaps not surprising).
Cheers
Just wanted you to know that it worked like a charm on my sz640. http://gparted-forum.surf4.inf.....php?id=431 also helped a lot though.
Hi,
I have the GParted Live CD for some time now. I used it to manage my partitions on a secondary hard drive after I got Vista, since Partition Magic doesn't support it.
The program used to work fine, but a few months ago I changed my video card (from an ATI to a Nvidia card) and now GParted say it can't load the graphical interface because it couldn't recognize the video card. It says I should load some script and choose the drivers and resolution but I have no clue on how to do that.
Any ideas?
I finally used GParted, and I really like it. It wasn't foolproof however. Something about my startup options (on Vista) got changed/corrupted. Kind of looked like it was looking for a remote desktop. So I popped in the repair disk I had made just in case, and had it fixed in a few minutes.
I must have a REALLY slow hard drive on my laptop. It took FOREVER to do the move, etc. Windows performance monitor showed an average of 8MB/sec of disc performance. I'm pretty sure that the disk can do better than that, so why would GParted use it so slowly? With todays processors, changing the disk headers, calculating the FileSystem Block/Header offsets/addresses/Tables should be microseconds in length.
Oh well, it's all good now. I have backed up my C partition using Seagate's 'DiskWizard', and I am now going to just restore over the good data with the backup. Why? I am selling the use of an external USB drive and this software as a back up solution for my brother - I'm his geek. I want to make sure it works.
About the video card, mine wasn't recognized either, and it was an ATI also. I just forced VESA mode with 1280X1024 resolution (the native resolution of my laptop). It worked fine, try that.
@Dennis Gearon: Well, how do I do that? Do I need to type some command? I'm pretty illiterate about that
And I think laptop hard drives are usually slower… don't know about yours, though.
This didn't work for me. Then again, I found this *after* borking my install.
I used gparted to resize the NTFS partition, then installed Gentoo, then tried to boot Vista and received the above error message.
Neither my system restore CD nor a Vista CD I downloaded could fix the partition. I can mount the drive and read it fine, but meh. The error the restore utilities return is "Partition table corrupt 0×490″
Oh well, back to the drawing board.
The program will exit in text mode after it fails to find the parameters to run the X windows video overlay to the text system underneath of the graphic look and feel. It usually gives an error message telling you how to do it. I think it was actually 'ForceVesa', but check.
I really like GPARTED. I'm going to look into more of the LiveCD/DVD *nix programs for working on my system. Now for something completely different
I'm I downloaded and ran Seagate's 'DiskWizard'. It's actually Acronis relabeled. I saved two copies of my hard drive (FORTUNTATELY). The program seems to be able to do a lot of what GPARTED does and do backup stuff. BUT BEWARE! I've read problems on the web about Acronis, before I found out that DiskWizard WAS Acronis. And I had those problems.
The program will restore to a partition that is smaller than one that was backed up (essentially shrinking your partition for you). Of course, the data saved can't be larger than the target partition. Here's my results:
First copy saved partition TO original size partition -> SUCCESS
First copy saved partition TO shrunken size partition -> *F A I L U R E*
Second copy saved partition TO original size partition -> SUCCESS
Second copy saved partition TO shrunken size partition -> SUCCESS
The failure mode is to just freezing up.
This was after the program checked both saved/compressed archives and said they were good.
So I just write what it says there? No slashes or anything? If so, I'll give that a try someday…