Change system and active partition

[clidx]

I have a 50gb partition on my hdd that i want to delete to install ubuntu. trouble is, i'm running dual boot with xp and vista and the drive (mapped e:\ in xp) is xp's system partition

so how do i delete, or at least shrink e:\? it's a primary, active and system partition. i'm willing to format xp to make this work (don't have much to lose) but is there any guarantee which partition(s) will be system, active and boot? any way to make sure set the one you want it to be? and in vista at least, the "mark partition as active" is greyed out in disk management; that option only appears on the system partition anyway (mapped d:\ on vista).

thanks.

[Ponch]

the "mark partition as active" is greyed out in disk management; that option only appears on the system partition anyway (mapped d:\ on vista).

The option is greyed out on the partitions that are already active. I write partitions with an s but there is only one (if any) on each physical HD. Do you have more HDs ? (where is your C drive ???)

[clidx]

i only have 1 physical hdd.

(as they are mapped in xp) C:\ is where xp is installed, D:\ is where vista is installed and E:\ is a spare partition

and the option is simply not available on any partition other than E:\ (E:\ is active). not greyed out, but in the context menu it's just not there.

[Ponch]

I'm a bit puzzled by all the contradictions in your info...

1st post, D is "the system partition" and the oinly one to have the option to be activated, E is "the XP system partition" is primary and active

2nd post, C is the XP system partition, E is the only one to have the option to be active and is now a spare partition.

As the operation you plan is quite critical,you should be more cautious with your infos...

[clidx]

i need to get this straight so i'll just do a print screen of diskmgmt in xp

I want to move the system and active attributes from spare (e:\) to vista (d:\) because i want to do a format of spare (e:\)

and e:\ is the only one to have an option to make it active but as it's already active it's greyed out

EDIT I see why you got confused in post 1 i posted about how the drives were mapped in vista my mistake

Edited August 20, 2007 by clidx

[Ponch]

Tat's what I thought, C and D cannot be made active because they are not primary partitions, see the green frame, they are logical drives in an extended partition. Your only primary partition is E which of course is already active. I wonder how you got there, installing both OSs to the end of the drive I don't have any idea how to get out of that mess so I'll just shut up now.

[clidx]

down the reformat route for me but this time not just of xp or vista but the whole disk...

spare is a really old partition. i made it so i could put downloads, music etc etc in there and it could be shared by the 2 OSs and i'd never have to delete it. and since it's creation, XP has been deleted and reformatted a million times and vista maybe twice.

[Ponch]

In fact you can log into Vista, use Disk Management to shrink the 1st partition and if you get 10Gig free you can install Ubuntu in the unpartitionned space.

[clidx]

it won't shrink, the options for them are greyed out.

it's as if my disk is locked down or something.

Anyway i'm backing up my files etc and i'm going to repartition my entire disk.

thanks anyway.

(back to the drawing board for me)

[urie]

Use Acronis DiskDirector it will do it.

[clidx]

i tried all sorts of partition tools, even the ones you boot into them from a cd/floppy, SPARE just wouldn't shrink.

anyway, i've repartitioned the disk now so nvm, thanks

[Ponch]

Tried bootable GDISK ? Of course you need enough difference between datasize and partition size. Defragging before might help also.