Creating a partition on Vista

[david_m]

Hey, I have a Dell INSPIRON 1501 with Windows Vista Home and I have a 120GB harddrive. I have a 110GB partition with Vista on it and a 10GB one with Recovery. Those too partitions came with the laptop.

Now what I want to do is make a 20GB partition to Install XP Home. How can this be done without losing any data on the other two partitions? Thanks.

[renegade600]

see this (http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about88231.html)

three things to make sure of,

1. check with your laptops manufacturers website and make sure theres xp drivers available for your laptop

2. make sure you have a full version xp. You cannot use xp that came with another computer nor can you use an upgrade. Using the wrong version of xp can really mess things up.

3. make sure you backup any files or data you cannot afford to lose, normally there should be no problems but...things happen.

[david_m]

Ok thanks. I was wondering though why do I have to shrink my main partition with Vista. I am afraid to shrink it because I do not know what shrinking it does. Could someone please tell me?

I have installed Windows XP many times and I can remember while I was installing it it askes you do you want to delete, repair partitons or continue and install XP on this partition.

I was wondering is there an option to creat a new partition there also? I can't remember and if there is would it work to install it that way?

Thanks again. Its just I have a new laptop and I am afraid to damage it.

[rwt325]

I shrunk my 320 GB HD down to 120 GB, then formatted and partitioned thus created space into two partitions, making total of 4 on the HD (Fourth partition is Dell recovery}. Running Vista Ultimate. No adverse effect on anytyhing that was on the original C drive. All done from the Vista console.