Dual booting Windows 7 and XP (harddrive partition problem)

Okay so I wiped my new 500gb harddrive, installed XP then dual booted Windows 7. Everything works fine, no problems except now my harddrive is split in half, half for XP and half for 7. So in Windows 7 I go into the command prompt and I ask it to calculate how much space I can shrink the XP partition and it still says it can't be shrunk anymore. So I'm stuck. I need most of my harddrive space for Windows 7 and only like 10gb for XP. Thanks in advance.

 

Usually if you can't shrink a partition even though it has a ton of free space it's because there are a few files all the way at the end of that volume which can not be moved and therefore prevent the partition from being resized.

You can read more about it here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...ows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/

There are a couple of solutions posted there like using a bootable linux cd and then another utility within linux to resize partitions but it ruins your bootloader (not for beginners).

If your installations are relatively new you might want to just reformat the disk and then repartition it into the appropriate sizes.

Another thing you can try is a program called Perfecet Disk 2: http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/
Some people have had success with this program but it may not be able to shrink 100% of your desired amount.

 

I know all of that.

The funny thing is I tried first partitioning the hard drive then installing XP on the smaller partition and installing Windows 7 on the bigger partition but that didn't work either.

 

Try partition manager programs?