I am using GParted and I want to delete some partitions and merge them. I had 2 parts for windows (swap and the main files) plus a part for recovery. THEN I had one big partition split into multiple partitions. One for the Linux files and one swap area. Somehow these were split a bunch of times and I can't seem to be able to combine them. The best I can do is resize them and reallocate the space but this leaves little divider "chunks" of space up to 1.6 GB in size! I just want to delete a few useless partitions and merge them. My partition table looks like so:

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated

How about showing the output of some tool with actual cylinder boundaries?
Like
fdisk -l

Chances are you can just "move" one of the offending partitions ...

Em... how do I "move" partitions? I suck with partitioning and I would like to have one clean drive rather than five sloppy ones of varying sizes. I cannot seem to format them to free space with GParted and I cannot delete the partitions because I must "delete any logical partitions with a number higher than x" where x is the number of the partition I'm trying to delete. So... the best I can do (since my OS is installed on 7 & 8) is delete only 9 & 10 (not 5 & 6). Also, I cannot add this free space to the one partition I care about (my main on... sda7?) Sigh... why is it so hard to just format and merge partitions?

EDIT: Also, that command did not work... nothing came up in the console after I typed it in...

Run it as root?

delete the other partitions, just dont touch the windows partitions
i had a similar problem , when u delete the other partitions with Gparted ,they automatically become one, i dont know how u are doing it, i burned Gparted and booted from it , i one windows partition and one for backup, and i had another linux partition (thats 3) and the last one being a logical which was divided in smaller partitions, i just deleted the logical partitions and the one in which linux was installed and it showed one big empty partition which i after divided into ext4 and swap
so my partitions are:
1) NTFS
2 NTFS (backup)
3) EXT4 ( ubuntu)
4) swap

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Okay, now for all of you needing to go back and start over, here it is:
(**BTW, I'm doing all of this from the Ubuntu LiveCD.**)

Get started by opening a terminal window: Desktop->Accessories->Terminal

1)Do a "sudo fdisk -l" to see all of the partitions.
2)Start up Gparted with "sudo Gparted" to be sure that the permissions are correct. The device is not necessary, it will find it.
3)Once inside, "Swapoff" any partitions which show keys by them. Once that is done you may delete the partitions.
4)Delete every partition but the one that is rooted beside the NTFS partition (that is your Windows partition)
You do all of these ops using the right mouse key.
5)Once you have the deletions done, make sure that you go to the EDIT pulldown and APPLY the changes. There is no looking back after this, however. Be sure that you have not munged something.
6)Sofa, so good.

Now, a fresh install of Ubuntu should be possible. What happened to me is I tried to reinstall Ubuntu and it made new partitions ahead of the original Ubuntu partitions, making the HDD a real mess to try and keep up with.

I'll report back after the reinstall. At least I know going in this time what I need to download and install, and what NOT to do when shutting down Linux...

EDIT: Reinstall worked just dandy, and aside from a few apps that needed download and install, the system is back and happy dual booting into XP SP3 or Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook.

*Note: all of the above were done while booted and running from the LiveCD.

Try the following instead

sudo /sbin/fdisk -l

Ubuntu doesn't like allowing root logins by default so just saving some effort here, if it asks for a password this should be your normal login password.

If your partition numbers correspond to their actual position (fdisk -l) on the extended partition you could:
Delete sda5 and 6. This will give about 4.4gb at the beginning of the extended part. Could use for swap.

Delete sda8. This will give around 100gb unallocated at the end of extended part.

This would not require reinstalling. But the unallocated area would need a filesystem and a mount point.
I also add I have never used Gparted so I am not familiar with any of its features.

Meh, reinstall might NOT be necessary, but it is likely desired. Once you've been thru the mill the first time, the next times go faster. Nothing like experience to educate. And, you likely couldn't delete partitions because they were mounted as swap space. There are keys next to them in Gparted and once you Swapoff those partitions, the rest can be removed. If your goal was the same as mine, following the instructions that I left for you will likely work. If you are not booted and running from the LiveCD, however, you may need to include that /sbin/ in front of the commands. The 'sudo' roughly translates to 'do as super user'.