Next, I went into Boot Camp Assistant where I deleted then created a larger Boot Camp Partition. I tried to make a 50 GB partition but it failed (screenshot 1). I kept trying smaller sized until I finally was able to create a 39 GB partition. Unfortunately, this won't allow me to upgrade to Windows 7 yet, but I wanted to complete the process to ensure this will work if I can free up some more space.

Using WinClone, I restored the Boot Camp partition but when I go to launch it in VMWare Fusion it give me an error about the partition table changing (screenshot #2).

I tried to import the Boot Camp partition but it says I don't have permission nor does it prompt me for credentials. Import was actually the wrong step.

I rebooted my system into Boot Camp and Vista started, ran chkdsk, then came up. When I logged in it said there was a problem loading my profile and a temporary profile was created. I shut it down and booted back into Snow Leopard.

I deleted the Boot Camp VM from the VMWare Fusion Library listing and the VMWare directory under my account's home directory: ~\Library\Application Support\VMWare Fusion\Virtual Machines\Boot Camp

I started VMWare Fusion, went to the Home screen on the Virtually Library Screen and selected Run Windows from your Boot Camp Partition. It came up with a dialog window saying it was preparing the partition, then booted up Vista. VMWare Tools installed as soon as I logged in, including a reboot when that finished.

Windows Vista boots up without a problem in Boot Camp. I'll probably import the Boot Camp partition into a standard Virtual Machine file to make it more portable since I rarely boot directly into Boot Camp. That will also provide me with the necessary space to install the Windows 7 upgrade.

     

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Resizing_the_Windows_Vista_Boo.zip (180 KB)