ok so I just built a new PC and installed vista and all the driver cds and what not. The hard drive i put in it is SATA 500 GBs. After i installed vista and drivers i went to disk management and saw there was only 80 GBs in use and the extra 385 GBs are unallocated. after searching of ways to merge these to volumes together i can only come up with making the unallocated space a simple volume then expanding the 80 GB volume onto the new simple volume. Unfortunately looking in disk management and right clicking the unallocated volume the "new simple volume" option is grey and unclickable. Are there any other ways to merge these two volumes or any ideas how to fix this? thanks PC guide community!

Unallocated is unallocated and not a partition to be merged. You should be able to extend the 80gig drive from Disk Management.

http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/viewstory.php?t=78111

the link didnt help. heres a picture of it if it helps. as you can see i cant do anything with this huge unallocated space.

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb281/TheTree718/problem.jpg

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb281/TheTree718/problem.jpg

Assuming that you have administrator rights then it could be a known Vista bug that decides to grey-out the options when it decides to. This is mentioned and an alternative way to partition in Vista using the command line DiskPart utility at How to work with partitions in Windows Vista / XP when Disk Management doesn’t work (http://vistarewired.com/2007/04/07/how-to-work-with-partitions-in-windows-vista-xp-when-disk-management-doesnt-work/).

You could also do this non-destructive resizing from outside Windows with 3rd-Party tools such as the [free trial] BiNG (in my sig) or the [free] GParted on a Live CD (http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/) or with the [expensive] Partition Magic.

Whatever you use to repartition (including Vista's own tools when they work) always backup any vital data onto removable media first.

sorry havent been by my pc in a while. i tried Disk part, afterinstal the cmd looking box flashed open then closed so after a few reinestalls it wouldnt work so no help there. Bing couldnt identify the unallocated space and i dont have a dvd burner on my pc so ill get a friend to install Gparted.

Bing couldnt identify the unallocated space There's always a first time I suppose - so what did it identify, if anything.

If both BiNG ans Disk Mangement are having problems with the geometry on the drive then it does sound as if something more deep-seated is going-on. Maybe GParted will work; maybe not. If not then I would be inclined to backup your data, wipe the drive and start-over.

good call. i have decided on wiping the hard drive. figure it would be a lot easier to start over new. thanks again paul