partitioning hard drive from vista to dual boot xp

Hi,

I've got a Dell laptop, with Vista Home Premium, and I love it.

I need to install XP as well, and make it a dual boot system, because I want
to run some audio software using XP.

Right now, my ~300GB drive is partitioned as follows:

78MB: Healthy EISA partition, which I cannot delete using Disk Management.
RECVERY: 10GB.
C: (Vista), using 12 out of 80 GB, haven't been able to shrink it further.
80GB unallocated - this used to be in C:, then I shrank C:
DATA: 90GB
FREE SPACE: 40GB

I want to create a new partition to install XP on, but cannot do so b/c I
have four partitions already. I cannot delete the EISI partition - I would,
but am unable to.

What's my best approach here?

Should I get a good disk partition software (Disk Magic isn't (yet)
Vista-ready), move & resize my partitions as I want them, then install XP
(and fix the MBR)? If so, any recommendations?

should I backup everything and wipe the whole disk clean, then install
XP, partitioning the drive into four parts (Recovery, VISTA, XP & DATA)? If
I do that, I don't know if I can install Vista - Dell didn't include
installation disks, they included recovery disks. Would I be able to use
those disks to install Vista on a specific partition, or would they just
wipe my disk clean and return it to factory install state?

Many thanks!

Matthew

MATT wrote:
I want to create a new partition to install XP on, but cannot do so b/c
I have four partitions already. I cannot delete the EISI partition - I
would, but am unable to.

Do you know what's on the EISI partition? Do you ever use it?

What's my best approach here?
>
Should I get a good disk partition software (Disk Magic isn't (yet)
Vista-ready), move & resize my partitions as I want them, then install
XP (and fix the MBR)? If so, any recommendations?

As someone else has mentioned, BootItNextGeneration (BING), is a good
shareware utility that runs off of a CD that can resize, recreate
partitions. Don't know why your Vista Disk Management can't delete the
EISI partition, but if it can't, then BING can. But you better make sure
you know what is on that EISI partition before you do it. It could be
something essential to the operation of your laptop, or maybe not.

should I backup everything and wipe the whole disk clean, then
install XP, partitioning the drive into four parts (Recovery, VISTA, XP
& DATA)? If I do that, I don't know if I can install Vista - Dell
didn't include installation disks, they included recovery disks. Would
I be able to use those disks to install Vista on a specific partition,
or would they just wipe my disk clean and return it to factory install
state?

The EM "recovery disks" will wipe everything clean and return them to
the factory defaults.

Yousuf Khan