How to shrink a windows partition to make more room for Linux?

[Eric Shubert]

joe at actionline.com wrote:
> Joe last wrote:
>>> Utterly incomprehensible.
> 
> Eric last wrote:
>> Not really. I presume you did something that mounted a filesystem in one
>> of the partitions, but given that you haven't even told us *how* you're
>> running GParted, it's sorta hard for us to guess. :(
> 
> From the beginning of my inquiry, I provided a screen capture of GParted
> at the following URL: http://upquick.com/linux/gparted1.png

That shows *what*, not *how*. There is more than one way to run GParted 
- from a live CD or from your hard drive. Big difference when it comes 
to what you're trying to do.

> I had used a live-cd to install Linux in free space on a 200-gig HP box
> that had a 10-gig HP restore partition as the primary (/dev/sda1) and four
> extended sub-partitions (or file systems) within a second partitions
> (/dev/sda2). I followed all the installation defaults; but when I then
> tried to shrink the 'xp' space so I could increase the Linux space,
> GParted would not allow me to do so.  At no time while I tried numerous
> scenarios to do this was the 'xp' partition or file space mounted.

As Joseph pointed out, as long as *any* filesystem on the drive is 
mounted, the drive's partition table can/should not be modified. If you 
ran GParted from the Linux distro that's on the HDD, that would be your 
problem. You need to run GParted from a live CD.

> In any case, after wasting 3 days on this ridiculous matter, I ultimately
> gave up last night ane 'nuked' the whole dang thing.
> 
> So, yes, for me, it remains utterly incomprehensible and it all just
> further reinforces my utter despise for everything about M$.

In this case, I don't believe that M$ was the problem, sad to say. I'm 
sorry that we weren't able to assess your problem more efficiently.

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'