Windows Vista partitions

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I just installed Windows Vista 64bit Home Premium and I made the partition 30gb for Vista. Now there is only 8gb's of free space. What happens when that space runs out? I was going to extend the partition but the option was greyed out. And what does mark partition as active mean?

Why couldn't they do it the same way as Windows XP does it? In XP, there is not a separate partition for Windows. I wish Vista was the same way.

Also, I saved all my pics from an XP computer on to a dvd and I put them on my Vista computer and it does not recognize them. It says it is the wrong format. The pics are in JPEG format. Is there something I can do to make it recognize them?
 
Vista does not not need seperate partitions. I have Vista, all my programs, and all my stuff stored on the same partition.

You cannot change the size of the active partition. You would have to boot to some sort of partition manager and use that to change the size.
 
They actually made some improvement with Vista's Disk Management now seeing the ability to shrink or grow secondary partitions not the one Windows is being loaded from. For that you need to boot up with a full install version disk to use the optional drive tools found there or a separate partitioning tool either retail or the Linux tool GParted live for cd.

Have a cd or dvd burner and a blank cd-r? For the price of a blank disk and a little time you can grab the free Linux tool for expanding the current primary before you start seeing the "out of drive space" or "out of memory" errors when there's no longer enougn drive space for the paging file used for virtual memory.

First review the information along with screen shots to get familiar with the tool itself. GPARTED DOCUMENTATION - GENERALITIES

The main download page for the cd iso images is seen at SourceForge.net: Files

For those who lack any experience or plans on running any Linux distros I generally refer them to the two platform independent releases of GParted for making things easier when working with MS type partitions. They still haven't released any newer releases but continue to see the two 0.3.3.0 and 0.3.2.0 versions once you scroll half way down the page there.

 
Active means that the drive is being used by the system. It will always show active as you are always using the system drive for something. ;)

Yeah Vista is a space eater. Sadly you can try using CCleaner to free up some space. But you might not get what you need out of it. I personally use at least 50GB of space for Vista.

Vista is the same way. You dont have to have a seperate system drive for VIsta. You just installed it that way. ;)

It could be the way you burned the disc that makes it unrecognizable in Vista. That has happened when using the Windows XP CD Maker to make a CD. No other OS but XP will recognize it.
 
You would have to use something like GParted LiveCD to do that. That way it can move the data over without formatting that data or causing you to lose it.
 
Is using something like that hard? Is there a chance of losing the information on the hard drive? Where do I get that program at?
 
It isnt hard. It is a simple program to figure out. When messing with partition tables there is always a chance to lose the information on the hard drive.

Mirrors

Download that. burn the ISO that you extract with WinRar to a CD. If you need instructions they are available here:

Burning ISO Images with ImgBurn - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

That is the instructions with ImgBurn. A free and great application to have and use.
 
Once you have the 35mb iso image for GParted saved to a folder you can also use one effective free version of BurnOn for all types of burning especially Linux iso for some reason. BurnOn CD & DVD - Free DVD Burning Software - Freeware CD burner Windows XP & Vista

Besides the annoying IE window that opens up after each burn offering the full retail version the program has been reliable for GParted and live distros as well. Starburn is the latest free version by the same software company that also does great without the IE window seen. StarBurn :: For User :: Product Introduction
 
I guess what I am trying to accomplish is combining the partitions together to make one partition.

Okay, I got the problem solved. Let me try to explain. I booted from the Windows cd and when I got to the screen where you have to choose where you want to install Windows, I deleted all the partitions I didn't want. And when I deleted the drive where I installed Windows(it would not let me format because of an error), it automatically combined the partition. So now I just have the 2 hard drives showing and no partitions.
 
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