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I'm having some problems while trying to install a dual boot on my Acer Aspire 1 A114-32-C1YA laptop.

It has 64GB eMMC storage, and 4GB of DDR4 memory, currently running Windows 10 Home.

In preparation, I also backed up all important data to a external HD, and reset the laptop fully. I've been running into quite a few problems so far. I have a usb with the latest 2019.1 Kali Linux on it.

When I first tried following youtube tutorials on how to achieve a dual boot system, I first encountered the problem where I could not shrink the C: Volume through Windows, as it limited me to something like 9837MB available to shrink. I need a minimum of 20GB. And since it's a clean reset laptop, it has about 41.99GB free space on it. How do I get pass this?

TL;DR Questions:

  1. How do I shrink C: Volume in Disk Management in Windows, when it won't allow it, even when there is free space for it?

Here's what Disk Management looks like to me:

Disk Management not-allowed

Disk Management allowed

my7h
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1 Answers1

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This took a while for me to figure out. The problem I was facing was easy to find, just by looking in Event viewer. First, you want to try to defrag. It comes with importance soon enough.

If you go into Event Viewer, do "Windows Logs > Application". Next, go to the right, and click on "Filter current log", and where there is text saying "All Event IDs", click on it, and search for the Event ID "259". Hit Enter or Ok.

Find the latest Event, and click on it. You're looking for the details, where it should state what the last unmovable file was. For me, it was pagefile. So, here's how to get rid of pagefile.

  1. Search for "advanced system settings", and click on the one saying "View advanced system settings".

  2. Click on "Advanced" and under "Performance" click on "Settings..."

  3. Tab over to "Advanced", and under Virtual Memory, click on "Change..."
  4. Uncheck "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives", and click on "No paging file", then Set, click on "Yes", then Ok.
  5. IMPORTANT: Make sure to restart. It won't be gotten rid of immediately, you need to restart your laptop.

Pagefile should now be gone. You could also defrag once more for good measure, and reopen Disk Management. For good measure, also do "Action > Refresh" and "Action > Rescan Disks". There should no longer be a small limit on shrinking the C: volume. If you try to shrink, and it gives an error message, try in smaller amounts, rescanning the disk, and/or more defragging. Baby steps seemed to work, in small amounts, rather than trying one large shrink.

I am now left with 25.39GB of Unallocated space, that I can now use as a partition for dual booting.

my7h
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