Mint 17.1 install pauses at partitioning for 12 hours.
 

Good day, I am installing Linux Mint 17.1 64 bit along side Windows 7, and the time it is taking to complete the resizing of partitions gives the impression it will not finish. 12 hours now. To change a 576 gb partition.

Is there something wrong? What should I do?

You ought to use Windows to resize maybe? Depending on what you started with, I'd say no more than 10 minutes.

If you first do a full clean up on your W7 disks it might go faster.

Could be some issue with not being able to set drive in correct state, some ram issue.

No modern computer ought to be taking that sort of time. 30 minutes I'd be starting over.

ok thanks

It can take a very long time if you are moving a partition. When you resize, always move the end of the partition, never the beginning, because that implies moving. (Typically gparted would warn you about it) Could it be you are accidentally moving?
I would not interrupt a running partitioning operation, cause that will cause data loss!

How much time it takes to shrink a partition is mostly determined by the amount of data that has to be moved. Any modern filesystem, including NTFS, spreads data over the partition in an attempt to try to minimize fragmentation. So shrinking a partition can result in large amounts of data that has to be moved. The nature of mechanical disks makes this a very slow process (it basically comes down to: read chunk of data from old location, write data to new location, correct metadata if necessary, repeat) due to the excessive amount of head movement that is involved in such an operation.

I usually prefer to copy the data to a different disk, delete the partition in question and creating two new partitions, then copy the data back again, which is usually far faster. Of course this can not applied in every situation.