New to Gparted. Help please

Hi!

At this place, Windows shows a partition only if
1. it os formatted using a file system that Windows understands (which would be NTFS and FAT[12|16|32]), and
2. the partition has a drive letter assigned - which can be done using the Disk Management console (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management). By the way: In this console, Windows will show you any partitoon it can find, no matter if it understands the file system or not.

This can be done using GParted, right. Boot from the CD (or USB key, if you prefer this way), delete the recovery partition, and afterwards, resize the Vista partiton. Thereby, you can drag eirther end of the partition to either end of the disk, so if the recovery partition is loacdted before (= left of) the
Vista partition, you can grow your Viste partition "to the left" by dragging the left end of this partition towards the beginning of the disk in the "resize" dialog. The same applies if the recovery partition is located behind the Vista partition - in this case, it's the other end of the partition that has to be dragged in the other direction... ;-)

Exactly.

About burning the CD: Just tell your favourite CD writing tool that you have an image of an already mastered CD that you want to burn to a disc (for this point, there's no general rule how to do it since the different writing tools differ largely in the way they are intended to be used).
Afterwards, boot your machine from this CD (maybe you must enter your system's BIOS setup to change the boot sequence - the system must first try to boot from a CD, and switch to the hard drive onyl if this fails. Again, there's no general rule how to enter the BIOS setup and modfy the boot sequence - you should refer to your laptop's manual if you're not sure how to do this).
Once the live system is up, there are two possibilities:
1. You're presented with a graphical, mouse-operated user interface. If the GParted application does not start automatically, just manullay start it by double-clicking the GParted icon at the top of the screen. After GParted comes up, you are presented with a schemtic view of your hard drive - and below, a list of the partitions on your disk. Just richt-click the partition you want to operate on, and you will be presented with a menu containing all the operations posible for this partition.
The actions your select will not be performaed immediately, but the will be added to a "To Do"-list which you can see at the bottom of the screen. This allows you to easily start over if you made a mistake (just clear the list). If youÄre satisfied with your partition layout, clicjk the "apply" button - and wait until GParted has finished working (depending on the size and speed of your drive and the changes necessary it can take hours to get finished). Don't turn off the computer until GParted is fiished - you'll get a success message then!
2. You are dropped to am command line. In this case, the command "sudo Forcevideo" usually helps to bring up the graphical interface.

Especially when working on NTFS partitons (which is the file system Vista uses), it is recommended that you reboot into Windows after each change to your NTFS drive. Windows may automatically run a file system check during boot - wait until this check is finished! Once Windows is up, open the copmmand prompt and use the command "chkdsk /f c:" to schedule another check during the next boot - and reboot immediately. Do this two or three times, just to be sure everything is fine.
And: Make sure you have a backup of your data stored on this hard drive before you start!

Should not be a problem - just burmn the DVD as if it was a CD.