dual boot

[Jack Posthumus]

I have a dual boot system with XP as the primary drive and vista as the
second. I wanted to try Vista before I committed to it by itself.
Question, what is the best way to make the Vista partition the primary
partition, remove XP, and resize to one partition? Is this asking too much
or can GParted do this???

 

[John Barnes]

You should double check, but odds are that your boot files for Vista are on
the XP partition. If so, at the very least, you will have to make the Vista
partition the active partition and run the startup repair using the Vista
install DVD. Then you should be able to delete the XP partition and expand
the Vista partition using Disk Management. If Disk Management won't expand
forward, Try what ever partition software you want, but make backups.

 

[Don]

You should double check, but odds are that your boot files for Vista are
on the XP partition. If so, at the very least, you will have to make
the Vista partition the active partition and run the startup repair
using the Vista install DVD. Then you should be able to delete the XP
partition and expand the Vista partition using Disk Management. If Disk
Management won't expand forward, Try what ever partition software you
want, but make backups.

I just checked Disk Management, which refuses to expand the Vista system
partition. I worry about gparted supporting Vista's new flavor of NTFS,
but I don't know the facts, just a worry. I do know for sure that the
latest build (2160) of Acronis Disk Director is Vista aware, so that is
definitely what I would use for this task, since I already have it ;o)

 

[Richard Urban]

Acronis Disk Director Suite build 2160 is Vista compatible. This means that
it will install and function with partitions (other than the system
partition) under Vista.

If you want to work with the system partition, which has many locked files
when you are in Vista, you must create the bootable emergency CD. Then
reboot into the CD you just created. Do your system partition work from
there.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[John Barnes]

Is it both Vista86 and Vista64 compatible? I've been reluctant to try it on
my Vista64.

 

[Richard Urban]

I don't use 64 bit so I can not answer.


--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User