DD won't create expanded partition

I have the same problem Armour has with expanding a partition that has Vista Home Premium on it. I've sent 2 support emails to Acronis 3 days ago with no response. I just found this forum by googling winload.exe (my system becomes unbootable after running the increase free space wizard) which then requires me to repair the installation with the original install disc. Very disappointing. I've found nothing in the documentation referencing this although I may have missed it. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mark

 

Mark:

Could you describe what you have for a partition layout currently and how you'd like to change it? It would be helpful to post a screen shot showing your current disk layout, either from the Disk Director window (running in manual mode) or one from Windows Disk Management. An example is in this post.

 

Hi Mark-

I got it to work last night but it wrecks winload.exe(?) and I have to repair the installation with the original Vista install disc. That's where I'm at right now.

Mark

 

If you move the starting sector of the partition where the Vista boot files are located then you will have to do a repair with the Vista DVD. That is normal and is due to the way Vista's boot loader works.

Do you have a Vista DVD to use for the repair?

You can "generalize" the Vista BCD so that you won't need to repair it if the partition is moved. If you are interested, have a look at this thread, which assumes that you have a single-boot Vista installation. If you have a multi-boot installation then post back for additional information.

 

I have a Vista multiboot-Home Premium and Vista Business.

 

newtie:

Having a multiboot Vista installation makes it less likely that the automatic repair function on the DVD can sort things out properly. You will probably need to do a manual repair.

Can you boot into either of the Vista installations at present? Answering the following may be helpful to those of us who are trying to help you:

1. What was your original disk layout before making changes? (number of partitions, contents of each)
2. What did you change?
3. Can either Vista system boot?
4. When you boot the PC, does the Vista boot loader menu come up on-screen?

 

OK, here goes...
Vista Home premium is on C drive. (Vista Business is on D or whatever drive letter gets assigned) It's full and giving me a warning that disk space is running low. Right next door on the same drive is 51GB of unallocated green space. I'm using the increase free space wizard. I go thru the steps just fine and commit. When I try to reboot to the drive that has VHP on it, I get a black screen that says it can't find winload.exe. I then boot from the original DVD with Vista on it and do a repair, reboot and then it says Vista Home Premium (recovered) and it works and the partition has been correctly resized.

My concern here is that I don't know what DD is going to do if I use other functions. If someone didn't have the original disc to repair the problem I'm experiencing or didn't discover this forum by accident like I did, they would be in a world of hurt, I think.
Thanks for your help,
Mark

 

newtie:

The additional information is helpful, but I still don't have a complete understanding of what is going on. The "Winload.exe is missing or corrupt" message happens if the Vista Boot Configuation Database (BCD) loses reference to the partition that Vista is installed to. This can happen if the partition is moved during a re-partitioning operation, but it would be nice to understand exactly what happened so that you can avoid it in the future.

Was your starting disk layout like this: [Vista Home Premium] [Vista Business] [unallocated]?

Which OS was running when you repartitioned; VHP or VB?

Did you use the increase free space wizard to add some or all of the unallocated space to the VB partition without making any changes to the VHP partition?

What would be really helpful would be a screen shot from Vista Disk Management showing your current partition layout. There is a lot of information in this screen shot that may save a lot of back and forth questions and answers.