Resize a virtual Windows boot partition
Boot into your VM and use F2 to change the boot order (cdrom first!) Change the VM Settings to use an ISO image of Windows as your CD-Rom
Very difficult to end up with that bootable NTFS image - everybody assumes you have a MS CD. And downloading 200+ MB so you can boot is weird (if you already have a Windows ISO)...
Get a virtual floppy drive emulator http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html#download
Extract to a folder and double click the vfd.exe Read all of the commands/help files or "install -> config /m -> start -> link (b) -> open " -you now have a virtual floppy drive with a blank virtual floppy (winxp = 1.44MB)
BETTER yet right click on your new B: drive with virtual floppy and format it as an MSDOS boot disk. Then copy diskpart.exe (full featured from win2k3 server)!
Google "Windows XP boot disks" and download the boot disk installer from MS http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=535D248D-5E10-49B5-B80C-0A0205368124&displaylang=en#RelatedLinks
Run WindowsXP-KB310994-SP2-Pro-BootDisk-ENU.exe and point it at your virtual floppy drive After a disk is written (very fast!) make sure you go back to your Virtual Floppy Console and "save filename" for each floppy (e.g. floppy1) - they will be saved in the vfd.exe folder
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread4644.html
OR Instead, "much faster" =) download iso buster and bust a windows boot iso Maybe somebody created a recovery console iso for us? http://markharding.com/xp_recovery_cd/
e.g. windows iso = Download your Windows Server release candidate here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb430831.aspx
Start your VM with the floppy drive pointing to your floppy image. You'll have to change the floppy in the VMware virtual floppy drive to each floppy each when prompted by windows...
Boot into Windows Recovery Console Use 'R' and choose your windows installation (you'll need your administrator password) You'll need a "full" version of diskpart (the one in recovery console or on the setup floppy disks is weak) -thankfully you can still create "virtual floppy images"
Browse (or search) to your diskpart.exe on a normal windows (ideally all of the files I've used I'd have for download...) and copy onto your Virtual Floppy Disk (right click and send to Z or copy and paste or whatever)
Inside of your VFD console... save diskpartfloppy.img
Then from VMware open up the newly created floppy with the full featured diskpart.exe BUT IT DOESN'T WORK... thanks M$ bullsh*t...
So instead, of course, I used a linux ISO (insert although I really like rescuecd) and GParted (very GUI) BUT I stupidly created a Dynamic Disk (which allows resizing in Windows... EXCEPT
Alternatively:
ntldr ntdetect.com boot.ini
Resize a virtual Windows partition with VMWare Converter
VMWare Converter, Enterprise Edition, which allows trivial migration of any Windows physical host to virtual hardware.
Additionally, the Converter can...well...convert from other virtual machine formats, including other VMWare products.
An interesting side-effect of this is that you can re-size your VMDKs (virtual disk image "files").
Normally this is something that you could do with ESX's vmkfstools command-line utility, which allows you to shrink or grow these virtual disks. Unfortunately, Windows will sometimes complain when you try to resize the system/boot partition.
Notice the "New Disk Space" drop-down; a 20GB VMDK, after conversion, will now be only 10GB! By choosing the same Virtual Center installation as the source and destination, you can effectively and conveniently resize your system partition. Don't forget to remove the "old" VM (the source in this case), otherwise you're not really saving any disk space!