The Glade 4.0

Hi all. We were recently given company laptops that are running Windows XP pro, and we do not have admin rights. They come with a product key for windows 7 professional, but are installed with windows XP pro b/c that's what the company uses.

I would like to create a dual boot to be able to also install windows 7 pro (I have a windows 7 pro disk). Its a 250gb HD, of which 240 are the main partition, and there's another 10gb unallocted.

The problem is that I can't seem to resize the HD partition to create a second one. Because its running windows XP, it doesn't come with a native app to resize the partition. I created a bootable disk to run GParted, but it cannot resize the partition. The slider won't move up or down, nor can I adjust it numerically - well, technically, it seems like it will allow me to move the 10gb unallocated space before or after the main partition, but it won't even let me extend it to include the unallocated portion, nor to make the partition smaller and increase the unallocated part.

I thought that maybe the reason that GParted couldn't resize the drive was because it needed to be defrag's - however, I couldn't natively defrag it b/c I don't have those privileges.

So I d/l'd paragon Total Defrag on my main system, and created a bootable CD. Able to run this on the company laptop. However, when it scans the drive, it does not recognize the file system, and shows the drive as "Unformatted" (Its NTSF formated)

I tried removing the HD and installing it as a USB drive using an SATA to USB adapter. My windows 7 system won't recognize it, it says that the drive has an unrecognized file system and it wants me to reformat the drive before it'll go further. I tried mounting it as a USB external drive on my mac system - same thing.

At this point, I'm at a loss - first, how can I resize the partition so I have enough room to install windows 7, and second, why are two different programs (Windows 7 via the SATA --> USB connection) and Paragon total defrag both showing the drive as unformatted when it clearly is? Its almost like the drive is specially formated or has some restriction on it placed by the IT team that makes it appear corrupted or unusable by most other programs unless they're running from the windows XP that's preinstalled.

Any input or guidance would be much appreciated.

Edit: Oh, the actual used space on the laptop is about 20gb. The rest of the partition is free, but I still can't resize it.

If I were in that position, I'd buy a second hard drive, replace the one in your system and install win7 on that.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I'd be open to that too. But I need some of the programs that are pre-installed (company specific stuff that's not otherwise available) and I think it has a VPN connection that's already configured to log onto the company servers, something that I don't think I can (nor want) to reproduce on a "clean" install.

I was thinking about maybe somehow cloning the current partition onto an external HD, then reformatting the HD with two partitions, then restoring XP onto one and installing windows onto th eother. But I'm nervous about this option, as if it fails, I've basically lost the windows XP install. Don't want to have to explain that one to the IT department...

Edit:

Ohhhhhh...do you mean buying a new HD that's a little bigger, making two partitions onto it and cloning the original HD onto one of the two partitions? What tools would be needed to make this work?

Parted can't resize NTFS filesystems. You'll need to use ntfsresize to shrink the filesystem first, and then resize the partition with fdisk or something. Personally, I do this sort of thing with System Rescue CD. It's got NTFS write support, ntfsresize, and (I think) ntfsclone (clones an NTFS filesystem to a partition of a different size).

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

What Stathol said, or Taskiss. Some cloning software have file-based options, rather than bit-by-bit. These can clone to different sized partitions (larger or smaller), so long as the target is large enough to accommodate the files contained in the image.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Partition Magic is a package I've seen used in the past. I've used packages that came with Linux too. Mostly, I'd clone the existing drive just so I didn't crap on the company laptop's disk image. I'm thinking that would be frowned on, and at the very least I'd not want to explain any issues that might arise.

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In time, this too shall pass.