Hi all. Am new to this forum, and I am so enthusiastic about Linux and relatives. Currently I use only Win XP Pro.

Pretty soon, I want to be installing and using Linux. But as a pre-requisite, I need to re-size (say increase) my NTFS disk partitions without spending a dime.

I have donloaded and burned copies of gparted and systemrescuecd. But they are not working.

gparted, I know requires ntfsprogs.rpm, which I also downloaded but I dont know what to do with it (ntfsprog) - do I have to install it, and how?. So gparted doesn't resize my partition although the GUI loads properly.

systemrescuecd just freezes once it has loaded the GUI and I hit the touch pad.

What can i do? Lots of thanx in advance.

since you can download and burn..try a live cd or dvd.....the best being for a cd
kanotix (based on knoppix)
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kanotix


and for dvd
knoppix http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=knoppix


both have qtparted altho not listed on the distro site but knoppix dvd has so many programs


(2) Most people suggest you do backups and know how to use your MS rescue cd then defrag MS b4 running qtparted.

3) however why not just run the cd or dvd for a while? good luck

I have just been trying to dl kanopix using the link provided but in vain. Apart from the linked pages being in German, there is a failure of displaying the pages.

I'll give a try later though.

Yeah.
The default language for the pages is in german.

You can click on the UK/US flag (i don't remember which flag was that).

Clicking on the appropriate flag will change the language to english. Hope it helps.

http://www.knoppix.org/
http://www.efense.com/helix/
http://www.freesbie.org/
http://www.sysresccd.org/
http://linuxiso.org/
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

I am having problems with my bandwidth so I cannot download big stuff for now.

In the meantime, I was able to install ntfsprogs-1.9.0 setup which I installed on my XP. After this, I experimented Gparted and it was actually able to resize one-way (only reducing - not increasing partition size) without any problem. When it reduces a partition, it leaves the freed space next to that partition. So, this does not help me because I want to increase not reduce.

Remember my original problem is how to increase partition c: in an XP setting with c:, d:, e: and f: partitions.

My question is: can Gparted increase the size of a partition which has another patrition right above it? Are there any tricks I am missing?

Rgds.

GParted Live CD has worked!

Although it was not able to directly increase the partition size, I managed to reduce then delete part of some upper partitions so that an unallocated space remained next to C: Then with two more steps, I was able to increase 2000MB to C:

All this without any hitch. No data loss, no freezing, no system instability. Am happy.