Resizing your Windows partition without additional software is possible, but it’s tedious and limited. If you require more advanced options to resize your Windows Vista partition, GParted Live CD is a viable option. It is a bootable Linux CD that takes you straight into GParted, the great Linux utility for managing partitions. The problem, however, …
Resizing your Windows partition without additional software is possible, but it’s tedious and limited. If you require more advanced options to resize your Windows Vista partition, GParted Live CD is a viable option. It is a bootable Linux CD that takes you straight into GParted, the great Linux utility for managing partitions. The problem, however, 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, or you will be unable to use your computer. Next, download the GParted Live CD and burn it to your 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 will need to right-click on the partition and choose Resize/Move from the menu.
Now, you can use either 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.
Note that this does not immediately apply changes. You can make other changes to your partition before clicking the Apply button when you are done.
Depending on the amount of data and the speed of your computer, it can take quite a while to resize your partitions. A good estimate is about 30 minutes.
Once it is done, quit the application, remove the live CD, and then reboot your computer.
Note: More often than not, there will be an error message that pops up that telling you Windows failed to start, and a recent software or hardware change might be the cause.
The exact message reads: File: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Status: 0xc0000225
Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.
Do not panic, and do not worry. 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 of your screen.
The system recover options dialog will show up, and will ask you if you want to repair and restart; confirm that you do.
If you happen 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 you resized.
Your computer will reboot, and you will see Windows Vista in the list, although it now will be under a different name than it was before, indicating that it recovered.
When Vista first starts up, it will start running a check of the disk. Whatever you do, do not hit any keys here, because you want the system to check the disk.
Once it is done, it will reboot, and your Vista will be up and running again.
GParted is not difficult to use, though it does require some time and effort. Following the steps above should ensure a pretty smooth experience resizing your partitions. If you were wondering if this was safe, partitioning is never fully 100% guaranteed, because it alters the partition table, which might result in data loss if it does not work out. Therefore, it is always a good idea to back up your entire drive before partitioning, and you should be good to go.
