As I said in the first post,I do not get the option to install mint alongside vista. If I had that choice I don't think I would be having this nightmare.

You didn't shrink C: neither.
You should get that option after shrinking the c volume

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Ah I didn't know I'd get the option to install mint alongside vista after shrinking C:. That's very helpful. I can't believe that wasn't noted in all the stuff I read about this.

The shrink option only has 20470 mb of space to shrink to. Is this normal? I was thinking this would be the place where I install mint. Or am I confused as it was suggested I use about 100 gb for my mint installation.

defrag your drive and see if that help.
maybe this will help https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...uacy-problems/

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Ok I'm defragging now even though it says it's having good performance. So will my mint installation be in the 20470 mb space? I'll read the linked post you provided again.

If i'll have the option to allocate 100 gb to my mint installation later I'll just do the default shrinkage.EDIT: After defragmenting I still have 20470 mb as amount to shrink.

I went ahead and shrunk the drive. The amount is the same as the new mint partition as indicated by the shrink amount.(20 GB).I'm not going to put any videos or pics on the mint part, so I think I'll be able to make do with that(14 GB). I DID get the option to install mint along with vista after I shrunk the drive in windows.Seriously, I spent quite a few hours reading and re reading about this and not once did any of it say this fact. Maybe it was me overlooking it . I'm glad I can wait longer on my linux journey to get a better idea about partitions and stuff.Well, I gotta get some mint updates and watch some kitten videos. My sincerest thanks to everyone that helped me.

you can store your files on the windows partition. Windows won't access a linux partition but linux can access a windows partition.

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Thanks color purple. I may have to do that since I made a system restore point in time shift I'm down to 6gb free space.I have to get a grasp on how mint files work as I'm not able to get chromium browser to work again like I had on on the usb session. Talk about learning something new everyday.