When I right click the C drive the "extend volume" option does not come up.
Can I use something like GParted to fix this?
Follow up: I unfortunately screwed up my laptop, system reserved was C, Acer was D... So I "found" a copy of Windows "laying" around and installed it. I didn't loose anything important.
This is because the system reserved partition is between it and the free space on the disk. To expand it you would have to move the system reserved to the beginning of the disk then expand the windows partition. Both can be done in Gparted. Because you will be moving the location of the beginning sectors of the windows partition it is almost certain that the boot will be broken when you restart from Gparted. This can usually be sorted by using the automatic start-up repair tool on the windows installation disk. If it doesn't then drop down to the command prompt from the windows CD, and run these commands:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrex /rebuildbcd
This is on a laptop without a disk drive. Do you know how to do that without a disk drive?
Some screen shots here showing you how to get to the repair tools on the windows installation cd.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/
Windows 7 Starter came preinstalled without a disk, and the laptop physically doesn't have a disk drive.
I have a Windows 7 Pro disk that I used on my desktop, could I get a USB disk drive and use that?
With the Gparted Linux distro its easy as you can just use UNetbootin to expand the iso onto a pen drive and it takes care of installing grub (on to the pen drive) for you.
With the windows cd you would have to follow some instructions like this to make a bootable windows installation pen drive.
Alternatively you could use an external cd drive and boot from that (if you have one).
Yep, you will be able to use the 7 pro disk to repair the 7 starter installation.
Looks like I need to get a disk drive now
You can use USB to boot into a windows installation. You cant extent to non contiguous space (space that is not side by side) Unless you are on a dynamic disk. Trouble is, windows can not be installed onto a dynamic disk.
I put Windows 7 Pro onto a usb and did exactly what you said, now when I reboot there is just a black screen with an underscore. When I go back into the Windows installer and search for existing Windows it says the recovery isn't compatable with the installer.
Have you used Gparted to move the system reserved to the beginning of the disk and expanded the windows partition into the space that it leaves? (This needs to be done first) Be careful that you don't change the size of system reserved and only move it.
If this has all been done correctly and the windows CD is still not detecting the windows install then you could try using Boot-Repair (a Linux tool).
When you have it booted and boot-repair open then expand the advanced options, change the operation to restore MBR, make sure that the partition booted by MBR is the system reserved partition (MBR options tab), then make sure that the repair windows boot files option (in other) is ticked.
There are screen shots at that link where you should see what I'm talking about.
If this doesn't fix the whole issue then it should at least get the MBR pointing to the windows boot sector, so you should get a boot error instead of just a blank screen.
