HI and thanks in advance for any tips/advice

I have a 2gb root partition (i know its too small but I am stuck with it unless I do a complete re-install ) and have 7gb free in an unused partition.

I run gparted and qparted and right-click the / partition but there is no option to resize it.

Here is my partition table

/dev/sda1 * 1 1275 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1276 3940 21406612+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 3941 4863 7413997+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 * 1276 1530 2048256 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 1531 3844 18587173+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 3845 3940 771088+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda3 is the free space and /dev/sda5 is my / partition.

/dev/sda6 is the /home partition


Is there any way to resize my root ( / ) partition ?

Use the gparted liveCD, then the partition is not mounted and can be resized.

OK I will try that . I have a live Knoppix CD with qparted on it,
will use that ,

For partitioning, "free space" means not partitioned. You will have to re-size sda3 to create free space. You will also have to move some things around to resize, since there must be free space adjacent to the one you are re-sizing.

In the partitioning tool, it should be fairly self-explanatory.