My computer is a HP prebuild, and it came with vista. The computer is shipped with 2 hard drives, 360GB each. Currently i have installed XP on the second hard drive and is using dual-boot. But after a while, i realized i run into a problem, there's not enough space to put all my programs in the 50GB space i cut out. So i wanted to make the XP partion bigger by eating up more space on the second hard drive. However, i cannot do it in vista, even tho it came with the ability to change the volume of the drive, it cannot change the drive with OS installed. Everytime i click add space to the XP drive, it gave me the warning saying if i do it, XP might not be bootable again. Other people say i can use partition magic, so i did. However, when i'm using it, i run into problem... the program marked the second hard drive as "BAD" for some reason, so i cannot modify it at all. But the first one where vista is installed works perfectly.....what might be causing this? cuz clearly there is no problem found with my second hard drive.

 

 

 

thank you for helping:)

 

 

 

and picture follows:

 

 

 

 

 

If there is any other way of doing it, then please share it with me. The whole reason i'm doing this is cuz i dont wanna reinstall XP again....

 

 

 

and also, for some reason vista refuse me to shrink the part of the drive with vista installed. It says the maxium space i can shrink is 37MB, when i have 255GB free space left.....

Yes, i tried to shrink a Vista partition myself from Vista a while back, but it didn't want to do it. And did a quick search, it's not possible (don't remember the exact answer).

 

But you can download Gparted and burn the iso onto a disc and partition with it (there's a how-to on it's page (i think)), it worked without a problem.

 

 

 

You can try that. Or wait for another one to give a more clear answer.

 

 

 

Remember to make the backup disc for Vista (if you haven't already) before you start.

but how about the XP problem? It have enough space to expand( i believe i have 165 GB space left in the hard drive), but as shown on the pic it won't let me do it....

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and also, does it hurt in anyways if i installing XP programs into the vista portion? like in a folder that's named XP program with all the XP programs installed in there instead of in the default program files folder in the XP part of the drive. When i'm not interfering with any vista applications, or it's best that i don't do it and download the program burn it to ISO and cut the vista drive?

Just get a Ubuntu live cd and run gparted like Oldjoe said.

ok, new problem..... well i tried that, but it didn't work, vista simply won't let anything change it's disk volume..... and for some reason i can't see my XP partition anymore from vista, even thorough XP is still bootable. Now i want to reinstall XP since extending the drive is impossible, but i'm having trouble formatting it due to the fact that it's no longer visible from vista. When i go to computer management and try to format it from there, it give me an error...

 

 

 

 

 

 

hmmm....... any ideas on how to get it visible again in vista?

Well, one idea you could try to get some of the second hard drive to belong to XP would be to load up Gparted (Linux program) to partition your hard drive. I would make sure you defrag Vista and check if it works after manipulating the Vista partition. You can then go to XP, and then press start > Run > diskmgmt.msc . Then you right click on the unallocated space and format it to NTFS, and as for cluster size, generally the bigger the better. I can't remember if in XP it absolutely has to be "Free Space" to make a partition though.

im1knight, apparently no one has mentioned this, but you really need to back up your whole PC before continuing with any of this. No matter how safe-for-a-PC that your partition program says it is, there is always a chance that it can foul something up rather badly, requiring a full restore of everything. I have seen this happen to many people, not the least of which was one of my own family. I would rather that problem didn't happen to you, at least not without having recovery options. :geek:

 

 

 

~D. V. "The backup is always important." Devnull

ok...burning everything to a disc, ive been backing up for every 4GB of files i collected anyway hehe

im1knight, apparently no one has mentioned this, but you really need to back up your whole PC before continuing with any of this. No matter how safe-for-a-PC that your partition program says it is, there is always a chance that it can foul something up rather badly, requiring a full restore of everything. I have seen this happen to many people, not the least of which was one of my own family. I would rather that problem didn't happen to you, at least not without having recovery options. :geek:

 

 

 

~D. V. "The backup is always important." Devnull

 

 

 

It actually happened to me as well when I was partitionning. Anyway, next time I format to reinstall Windows on my new hard drive, I'll be partitionning in a much better way it's partitionned right now.

but the problem of where i can't see the XP part of the hard drive still exists...i want to make the part visible to vista first than adding more space to it. I could just reinstall XP since it install in less than 20 min anyway. I'm not even sure if i can delete the XP partition since vista is not seeing this partition at all.

ok um..i reinstalled windows XP, since it's just 2 much trouble expanding on the existing one. I created the new OS with 120GB HD partition. However for some reason i'm having trouble getting it on the bootloader screen.... no matter which program i use, they only show windows vista and "windows recovery"(original form HP) are the 2 installed OS, and they don't detect XP...... So i basically cannot boot up windows XP, and when i tried adding the entry in, it just simply won't work on startup. So any ideas on how 2 fix this?

I'm sorry, I don't have time to tell you how to fix this, but I know the reason why you're going to have trouble making it all work normally now, since usually, to not have any trouble, Windows XP HAS to be Installed Before Windows Vista is installed.

hm..i made it work now somehow.... For some reason i have to pick the boot drive as C, even my XP is installed at J.....weird...but works fine. still have no idea how that happened..i guess it's magic lol :shock:

hm..i made it work now somehow.... For some reason i have to pick the boot drive as C, even my XP is installed at J.....weird...but works fine. still have no idea how that happened..i guess it's magic lol :shock:

 

 

 

Haha, makes me remember of my friend that messed up his bootloader, he always had to guess which one was the right one as the letters kept on chaning :lol: