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Does anyone know of any non destructive partitioning software that works in Vista? Partition Magic doesn't seem to and I'd like to make the Vista drive on my laptop a bit bigger. With hindsight it was stupid to make the XP partition larger than the Vista one.
Disk manager in Vista has that built right in. They are already "dynamic" and you can extend and shrink partitions at will by right clicking them.
//EDIT hmmm... since you are dual booting I would back up the entire drive. You might have to edit the boot sector, not sure if vista takes care of that?????? Also if partitition magic doesn't work in Vista try doing it from XP. Have a floppy handy with the boot ini etc on it.
Oh, I didn't know that? Even the Home Premium version? Yeah, I've just had a look and you're right. I right clicked one of my drives and got "shrink volume" as an option, but not expand - probably because you need to shrink something first before it will let you expand a volume?
That was quick! I edited my last post. Look at the bottom.
Yeah you can ONLY expand something if you have space. Back up!!!!
Try shrinking the XP drive and then I would reboot. I am sure Vista would take care of the boot sector but just be cautious.
Thanks that's good advice. In fact, I have recent acronis image copies of both the XP and Vista partitions, because I envisaged having to use disk manager to format the Vista drive from XP and add some space from the data drive, then go into Vista and delete the XP partition so that I got the space back for the data drive. But it's always edgy when you know the backup has to work or you're reinstalling Windows.
And by the way, Partition Magic wouldn't work in XP either - no idea why! The drives had question marks on and it came up with silly errors if I tried to do anything.
The wy I understand it is if XP is ever upgraded to dynamic disks partition magic cannot work because of either licensing or they haven't figured the format. No expert just guessing. So either you upgraded them, they shipped that way or Vista did it. Since you have a backup go for it using Vista. ;)
Possibly Vista did it. I'll try shrinking and expanding volumes, it sounds very little trouble. And if the worst comes to the worst, I have got the aronis backups. It really never occurred to me that disk management could partition in Vista!
PS What's an XP dynamic disK?
Oh... almost forgot, you can make a recovery disk from within the windows backup utility and boot from it should something horrible go wrong. Like a power outage!
Or the boot menu getting confused - but that shouldn't happen if I'm just taking a few spare GB from XP. I don't know why I didn't have the sense to realise that partition would need to be bigger. I suppose I saw myself mainly using XP and just having Vista there to play around with a bit.
Moira,
Please remember to clear out the junk files and DEFRAGMENT first ;)
Yeah, I just did a defrag actually, with a free program recommended as being good. I was hoping to gain some space, but in fact I ended up with less space somehow after the defrag.
You probably didn't see my edit above - what are XP dynamic disks?
Moira... vista has a good defrag built in. ;) In fact the disk clean utility is good as well it will delete junk and compress old files. Then you can defrag. You probably have less free space because the defrag utility takes up a few megabytes or a few hundred who knows.
Dynamic disks are microsoft's toy on microsoft systems. They go beyond basic disks because they use a hidden database to stor information about disk attributes. You can resize them at will and even stor a volume across mutiple disks. All from within windows. Once you go there though, utils that read basic disks will no longer work, like Diskmagic. On windows this is an MS only implementation.
OK, I tried this. It let me shrink the XP partition but it's not offering me the chance to expand either of the other two volumes (and the data drive is next door to the unallocated space). There seems no way I can get to expand Vista.
Hi Moira,
Please be very careful using third party software on Vista, particularly free stuff. Vista is very new and I don't think that we will get SP1 before September? There is a learning curve for everyone here?Quote:
Yeah, I just did a defrag actually, with a free program recommended as being good. I was hoping to gain some space, but in fact I ended up with less space somehow after the defrag.
You will not save any space by defragmentation. All you do is reorganise stuff and compact files (that is different from "compress"). You may well fetch up with less apparently "free" space as the utility doubtless uses the page file, which does not get defragmented anyway.
:)
Right ..... well I did have a go with a live system tools CD, but I'm running into the same problem, namely the logical drive in the middle of the two operating systems. I can't move the unallocated space "over the top of it" to the vista drive. Disk management won't do it and neither will gparted. So I'm copying my data onto this PC, then I'll delete that partition and it will all be unallocated space next to Vista. Hopefully then I can expand the Vista drive. The logical drive won't even expand with the free space next to it (?) it's going to have to go and then be recreated.
Edit Well, that didn't work either. Seems like nothing will persuade the Vista partition to expand - the option is just greyed out in Disk Management. The other volumes will expand no problem when there's space next to them.
I'll have to get some partitioning software - to hell with third party - Vista's own tools aren't working. Surely to goodness some sort of partitioning software will actually do the job it's designed for? I just can't understand what it is about the Vista drive that I don't have the option to expand it.
OK Moira,
This is my personal take on things, so please go easy?
MS have been criticised for security weakness have they not? well, a lot of this is due to their hitherto obsession with backwards compatibility.
Vista is a breakaway............ if you want to dual boot, then do it with Linux.
Otherwise stick with the "old" product range like myself and many others are ;)
Do not expect Vista to be compatible with previous Windows versions.... just read the MS oracle? Vista EOLs in 2012, but XP in 2014 :D
I hear what you're saying, but if they're going to include a built in partitioner in Vista and then make sure it doesn't work on the vista partition - well it's a bit daft isn't it? I'm just wondering what I actually have to do to get a bigger space for Vista to reside on.
Mind, it had gained some space again when I last looked, there was 5.66 GB free. Yesterday it was 3.18 - I've no idea how it's varying so much!
Hi Moira,
I would guess that if you just had Vista, it would work. It just doesn't like working with another OS, because it probably doesn't ;)
I would expect it to stuff Linux with great glee though? :D
I see .... you think maybe it won't expand because the volumes next to it are XP? The data partition isn't one or the other though and they're all formatted NTFS - I just think it doesn't make sense. There's no rational explanation for it any more than there is for my Vista drive gaining and losing GBs each day.
My guess and these are big GUESSES at this point is Windows is limited to the congruity of the start of block of each virtual disk that is flagged to boot. Wait a tick! I just looked at my box, vista defaults to a basic disk so I am not sure why partiion magic didn't work. Hmmm my the page file and volume shadow could be stopping it? Mine are right in the middle of the disk. Yours might be near the partition point. Also how is the free space showing up? Unallocated? Something is locking it. Post a shot of your screen.
I have NEVER tried this but I wonder if you can boot into safe mode or command line mode and use diskpart, the command line utility in vista? Once you get the volume and disk id you can select it and enter something like:
extend size=2048 disk=1
Also since like 2000 you could merge partitions by clicking them both and merging them. If you have some extra space try that? Vista may still be seeing it as a partition somehow. Hope all this GUESSIGN helps. ;) There isn't much on vista yet our on the boards.
I've got severe problems now with the laptop - you were right when you were worried about the boot manager. Now, even though I haven't touched either Vista or XP, I'm getting an error that NTLDR is missing, which is serious iirc.
So I can't post a screen shot, sorry - I can't get into my laptop :( any help would be appreciated!
This is one of those times where the XP rescue system comes in handy :)
I don't have Vista so I can't tell you exactly what to do there, but I know XP has a rescue system on the CD, so boot from one of them and repair it. You should be fine, the NTLDR is "NT Loader". It's kind of like Lilo or GRUB on Linux, except for Windows, and just loads OSs.
A quickie google on "NTLDR fix" should point you in the right direction.
And don't worry, I've screwed up MBRs and partitions far worse than this. Heh, had a Redhat install fail WHILE doing the lovely task of writing data to the MBR which left the machine in an "I'm not booting" state.
Luckily I sat down, installed a new copy of a different distro over it and it overwrote the MBR.
For Windows 98 SE, I once was going to tri-boot. I had it set up and was installing the third OS (FreeBSD) and it failed. Now normally that isn't a problem but at the time I couldn't get Linux to use my modem (This was back in early 2000 before it actually could recognize hardware like that by itself, so I was pretty well stuck), when I rebooted, FreeBSD would load but since only a base install was there, NO apps would load, and with Linux I could boot into it, but couldn't get to Windows as for some reason something happened during the install and it just woul not load.
So my boot screen showed Windows 98 SE, Linux, and FreeBSD, but only Linux booted into a useable state.
To make matters more interesting, I had JUST whiped my back ups, thinking I would do a fresh back up afterwards. (It was late, I was tired, wasn't thinking to good, so obviously that really bad idea of whiping back ups before doing this was stupid as it is, but thinking somehow nothing could go wrong and I'd do another back up later was somehow going to work was plain dumb).
I lost a lot of data but fixed it with Fdisk on a floppy, and just deleted every partition.
Another time, I screwed up the MBR so bad I had to edit it in hex.... I don't remember HOW I managed to do it, but the thing booted afterwards.
Hi Moira,
I have never run Vista on any of my machines, and I have never dual booted XP with anything, so this is just guesswork.
I am assuming that repairing XP and the MBR and/or replacing the NTLDR will get you back to where you were.
You might try this in XP not in Vista:
1. Defragment.
2. Try to repartition the XP partition and create a new, empty one.
3. See if Vista will expand into that.............it probably won't.
4. Delete the new partition, which should make it revert to free space on the drive?
5. Try to get Vista to expand into the freespace.......... it should do that?
Like I said, that is pure guesswork based on my experiences with older versions of Windows, and partitioning tools.
:)
It can't find the boot file at this point that doesn's mean data loss and this is good because you get to play with how windows boots. look on your backup and post boot.ini here.
nihil, I can't defrag because I can't get past "NTLDR is missing". And Vista wasn't expanding into any free space when I tried earlier. I want to try the partitioning software I got, but I haven't been able to install it on the laptop yet.
I'm going to put the Vista disc in and try fixmbr or the recovery tools on that - it's already once rescued an install. If that doesn't work I'll have to have a rethink. I was also wondering whether to put Ubuntu on the laptop with Vista as a more interesting dual boot than XP/Vista. I'm downloading feisty fawn as a start. I found dual booting linux and windows worked better when I installed linux first, otherwise the boot loader just doesn't give me two options. However I don't much fancy wiping my vista partition.
Edit RoadClosed, I presume you mean from the XP backup since Vista doesn't do boot.ini?
Here's the boot.ini file from my backup acronis image of the XP partition.
;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
Hi Moira,
I meant when you got it working again :D
You say that Vista wouldnt expand into free space. Was this "true" free space or was it partitioned but empty?
No, it was unaollocated. And I'm currently trying fixmbr, but each windows install I choose, the xp disc is telling me the administrator password is wrong, which makes no sense because I know the password I'd have used. All I can do after this is reinstall then restore to a backup image.
If I have to do that, I fancy installing Ubuntu - however, if a repair install of Vista or XP would work then I'd go with that for now.
What do you mean when I get it working again? I'm never going to get it working again :(
C'mon Moira,
Less of the defeatist talk, if Microsoft invented it then it can't be that difficult? :DQuote:
What do you mean when I get it working again? I'm never going to get it working again :(
What you say about the unallocated space is both interesting and surprising. I could understand a reluctance to expand into another existing partition (just about), but not allowing expansion into unallocated space is very strange :confused:
The disks on here are not dynamic - they're basic. I got a warning message when I was about to make a change on the laptop just now to some unallocated space that if I made the disks dynamic I could only boot from the current operating system or something. There's a column in disk management that says basic and that's what gets changed to dynamic if your disks change (I think).Quote:
Originally Posted by RoadClosed
I'm still in a mess with this laptop. I installed ubuntu which was fine, but by god, no wonder people don't use linux, they don't exactly help you, do they? Going to install a network printer, there's a quick box that comes up with an example of the format used to connect to the printer and when that disappears you're left with no help at all! I know \\server\printer from windows, but I don't know how it's done in linux and you can't guess that sort of thing! No, I'm not surprised ubuntu hasn't been the unqualified success in pre-built machines that some people expected it to be.
Anyway, I'm getting side tracked. After installing ubuntu, I had to reinstall Vista and I'm now trying to partition the disk. As I have 4 primary partitions already, there's 11 gig space that the partitioner won't do anything with! I fail when I try to make one of the primary partitions logical (it needs more space apparently). I've got this number because I had to make a disk for the root file system in ubuntu and some swap space. That made 4 with vista and ubuntu. However, I'm not getting the option to boot into ubuntu when I switch the computer on now, ie there's no boot loader of any sort. I might just ditch ubuntu, get vista installed and think about a second OS later :( I'm so, so tired.
Earlier I was going to try and get XP to boot by maybe tweaking the boot.ini. Then you could look at disk manager and see whats up with the vista partition. I would bet though if you booted to the DVD and ran repair it would have at least fix the boot issue. Even without a repair disk. It's worked for me a few times already.
But re-installing is probably what I would have done by now. ;)
//EDIT the boot loader would have to be able to recognize how vista boots and it would need a small partition at the front of the disk I would think. I don't think any linux loaders recognize Vista. I just looked up an article. The NTFS system in Vista IS NOT THE SAME AS XP, that is why nothing works right now. This has a foce dual boot workaround
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about78184.html
I twice tried the repair option on the Vista disk and it did bugger all. It detected errors with the startup but failed to fix them. It's saved one vista install for me and I thought it was a wonderful feature then - but no, it's not been any help this time.
My restore over the network kept inexplicably asking for a reboot, then going back to the beginning, ie the reboot cancelled Acronis. Since I ditched Ubuntu I had enough space to copy the backup across to the laptop which is what I'm doing now. It ought to work across the network but seems altogether flakier.
Whilst that's going on, I'm reinstalling visual studio AGAIN here as not only have I got that black screen problem, but it's started telling me I can't have registry access when I try to create a new project (instead of opening the project).
I had two and a half hours in bed last night and I'm at work 6 am tomorrow. This is one of the least enjoyable nights I've ever spent.
Edit And I can't see my two other disks in Explorer and I've no idea why! I wanted to copy the backup onto one of them but it's nowhere to be seen!
I was just playing with something... I know you had a bad night but vista keeps getting cooler everytime I play with it hardcore. Despite the vast learning curve. This could come in VERY handy for any of us. Here is a screen dump:
c:\>bcdedit /help >cool.txt
BCDEDIT - Boot Configuration Data Store Editor
The Bcdedit.exe command-line tool modifies the boot configuration data store.
The boot configuration data store contains boot configuration parameters and
controls how the operating system is booted. These parameters were previously
in the Boot.ini file (in BIOS-based operating systems) or in the nonvolatile
RAM entries (in Extensible Firmware Interface-based operating systems). You can
use Bcdedit.exe to add, delete, edit, and append entries in the boot
configuration data store.
For detailed command and option information, type bcdedit.exe /? <command>. For
example, to display detailed information about the /createstore command, type:
bcdedit.exe /? /createstore
For an alphabetical list of topics in this help file, run "bcdedit /? TOPICS".
Commands that operate on a store
================================
/createstore Creates a new and empty boot configuration data store.
/export Exports the contents of the system store to a file. This file
can be used later to restore the state of the system store.
/import Restores the state of the system store using a backup file
created with the /export command.
Commands that operate on entries in a store
===========================================
/copy Makes copies of entries in the store.
/create Creates new entries in the store.
/delete Deletes entries from the store.
Run bcdedit /? ID for information about identifiers used by these commands.
Commands that operate on entry options
======================================
/deletevalue Deletes entry options from the store.
/set Sets entry option values in the store.
Run bcdedit /? TYPES for a list of datatypes used by these commands.
Run bcdedit /? FORMATS for a list of valid data formats.
Commands that control output
============================
/enum Lists entries in the store.
/v Command-line option that displays entry identifiers in full,
rather than using names for well-known identifiers.
Use /v by itself as a command to display entry identifiers
in full for the ACTIVE type.
Running "bcdedit" by itself is equivalent to running "bcdedit /enum ACTIVE".
Commands that control the boot manager
======================================
/bootsequence Sets the one-time boot sequence for the boot manager.
/default Sets the default entry that the boot manager will use.
/displayorder Sets the order in which the boot manager displays the
multiboot menu.
/timeout Sets the boot manager time-out value.
/toolsdisplayorder Sets the order in which the boot manager displays
the tools menu.
Commands that control Emergency Management Services for a boot application
==========================================================================
/bootems Enables or disables Emergency Management Services
for a boot application.
/ems Enables or disables Emergency Management Services for an
operating system entry.
/emssettings Sets the global Emergency Management Services parameters.
Command that control debugging
==============================
/bootdebug Enables or disables boot debugging for a boot application.
/dbgsettings Sets the global debugger parameters.
/debug Enables or disables kernel debugging for an operating system
entry.
I already got to know BCDEdit :) in fact I thought all I was ever going to experience or learn about Vista at first was that pesky bcdedit file as I battled with leftover dual boot entries from no longer there versions of vista or some other disaster with the boot loader. Then I found EasyBCD and life changed! I was no longer trying to learn command line prompts, it was an easy to understand program!
Well, I think I'll have to call it a night now - paragon is merging the entire hard drive, and because it's doing it non destructively it's taking ages, so that's the laptop out of action for a while.
I'm going to carve my disk up with the two new partitions after the main operating system partition to see if that helps. I still want to put ubuntu on, and have downloaded lilo in anticipation of major boot issues.