ok. first job, i changed win 7 partition to 'Primary'. next step, i resized the XP partition while i was using win 7. next, i booted from Acronis recovery disk to see if the partitions were visible on the HDD. unfortunately, they are not. Acronis only sees the whole HDD, no partitions. so my idea appears unworkable. i am assuming, therefore, that your method wont work either, Ted Myers. i know i can always resize win 7 partition, leaving the freespace either at the front or the back of that partition. if i put thw win 7 partition at the back, it will leave all the free space between the 2 O/S partitions. will that be ok to then merge them? will either O/S then boot ok, or will there be any delays? if i put win 7 free space to the back of the partition, will i still be able to merge the 2 lots of free space when there is an O/S partition inbetween them?