Vista partition problems

Hello!

I have a Lenovo T61 and I would like to partition the hard drive and install another OS. At some point I did a clean install on the computer and erased all the data not only from the primary vista partition that my T61 came loaded with but also the data from the recovery partition.

As you can see in the picture below i have two partitions now, my vista partition and my New Volume partition, I would like to install my OS on the New Volume partition but I want to expand it to 15 gigs or so. How do I do this? From the vista partition program it does not allow me to extend the New Volume, nor to shrink the Vista partition. What am I doing wrong?

 

I wonder if your problem is similar to mine (in a way)
Originally I could do it, but not on a later recovery from the recovery discs...
And don't ask me why, as it doesn't really make any sense...

Vista will only allow your primary partition to become "so small" - I think that limit may even be 70GB - I understand you want to "remove" memory from the main partition - Vista, may block this because its too little memory for its liking.

But if you have the recovery discs, you should be able to delete partitions through that and reinstal everything in the way you want, even if this means wasting a lot of time.

 

When I try to shrink the size of my vista partition it tells me there is 0MB available to shrink. Yet I have 10.5Gigs on that drive free. Does anyone know how to fix this problem? I just want to install this new OS....

 

I suspect that for some reason Vista believes the drive shouldn't be any smaller, and therefore it doesn't allow you to do so.

At least that seemed to have happened on my Sony SZ after using recovery discs.

 

Your going to need to use another tool to shrink your vista partition such as partition magic or GParted, it works a lot better than the built in tools.

 

You're using Vista
Ok, this should be a FAQ. The reason you can do what you want is due to certain files Microsoft chose to place at the end of Vista partitions'. Those are MTF files (or MFT, whatever). You cannot shrink your partition until you move those files away from the end of it.
Also you should disable other Vista stuff in order to move other 'unmoveable files'.
The funny thing is that to defrag the partition you need a third party tool.
I used Perfect Disk 8 demo (it's free for 30 days).

To see what needs to be done, have a look here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/working-around-windows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/