I recently installed a larger Hard drive in my system and used Ghost to move my SuSe Linux 10 from the small to the larger drive. Ghost used the extra space to make the swap partition larger. I have tried using the partitioner in Yast as well as booting the install CD and choosing expert options. Either way it won't let me resize the swap partition to recoup the lost space. Here is what the partition table looks like.

/dev/sdb 16.9GB IBM-DXHS18Y Start -0 End- 2212
/dev/sdb1 8.9GB Linux Swap Start- 0 End- 1170
/dev/sdb2 7.9GB Linux Native Start- 1171 End 2212

Is there anyway to fix this situation short of a new install?

You could use the YaST partitioner to remove the old swap partition and create a new one.

I am not at all familiar with Suze, but you should be able to manipulate your patrition tables using the old standby in any distribution: fdisk

Every time I try to do anything it says I have to unmount the swap partition, I used swapoff, but I still get the message.

You could boot up in rescue mode, or use a live distro. The the filesystems are not mounted and you can use fdisk. If you boot up with knoppix, there is also a graphical partitioning tool that you can use. Since you used ghost to move to a second drive, make sure that the entries in /etc/fstab are changed to reflect the changes.

Does it make a difference that my swap partition comes before my main partition in terms of start and end points? If I delete the swap partition is it going to mess up the other one?

No, deleting a partition doesn't change other partitions, it leaves empty/unallocated space. What you really want to do is use "/umount" on the swap to unmount it, then use the SuSE partioner.

However, alternatively a live CD of some distros will work, or you can use fdisk.