I'm trying to shrink partition "C:" on my hardrive but am unable to do so. I've tried defragmenting my drive with PerfectDisk11 and after defragmenting I was only able to shrink down by 9gb. I have a 350gb hdd and want to partion at least 40gb of space to install windows 7. I'm currently running Windows Vista. I've tried gparted also and get some flags on my the "C:" drive. Also when I use PerfectDisk 11 I get some excluded blocks (which I think is causing the problem) at the end. I've tried going into settings and removing them from being excluded by the defrag but can't. It's a bootstat.dat or something like that. I'm unable to uncheck it to be unexcluded. I've also ran the defrag on system boot so it can move the metadata blocks. Please help!
Not sure that I can offer help for your specific problem. But have a suggestion for you to try if you have not tried it already. I used Partition Magic 8.0 on my XP system. Set up a partition for Win 7. Simple and straight forward. Installed Win 7 on the new partition and now when I start the computer it allows me to select XP or 7. No problems whatsoever. The bad news is that PM 8.0 is no longer offered by Norton/Symantec. You will need to find the software on your own. Good luck.