This thread is pretty old...
This has been a serious problem for alot of people as I have witnessed at numerous boards and forums on Microsoft sites. G-Parted is not the only partitioning manager that suffers from an apparent lack of support for managing Vista formatted NTFS partitions. Vista utilizes NTFS but, few know that the NTFS format that Vista uses has been updated and is not the same as the old NTFS format that NT used for Windows 2K Pro and XP versions. Vista purposely ignores other partitions unless you manually tell it to recognize them, more appropriately, Vista is designed to not intrude upon other O.S. systems including XP as I ran a dual boot system with both. Vista comes with Bit-Locker but, your mother board has to have a compatible security chip else Bit-Locker won't even install -- I know this off hand personally as it would not install on my Compaq Presario V2000 due to no security chip.
Another issue that might be haunting people here is the fact that I see all types of details but, I have yet to see anyone stating as to whether or not the partitions that they created were actually marked into service as being active. If a partition is not marked active it will be hidden to all O.S.'s regardless and may only be seen by a stand-alone O.S. independent Disk Partitioning Manager. If G-Parted is in anyway reliant upon Linux kernels this may present a problem; the G-Parted partitioning utilities are having the partition blocked from view due to a "hands off" flag sent up from the kernel/O.S. hardware abstraction layer -- something in that order.
An inactive partition is treated as invisible. This state is primarily used when installing multiple O.S.'s on a drive as a work around technique to prevent installation conflicts -- once all the O.S.'s are installed you mark all partitions active and install a 3rd party boot manager. This particular style is employed by hardware hacks and systems administrators mostly.
In closing if you do have Bit-Locker installed and operational your partition/hard disk is actually encrypted, anywhere from 128 to 256 bit on average, along with its MFT and address ranges. Yeah, you're going to have a hard time setting up anything that resembles a rational memory quota like a partition for a full blown O.S. You will have to turn Bit-Locker off and if you chose to compress your Vista NTFS file system on the drive that is also going to present headaches.
Short and sweet:
0.) Notify your Vista O.S. System Administrator/Log in as Administrator -- as applicable
1.) Have Bit-Locker decrypt your drive
2.) Turn Bit-Locker off
3.) Turn NTFS compression off
4.) Decompress your NTFS partition (Vista) -- this is generally done automagically when you turn off drive compression but, pay attention and make sure it is decompressed.
5.) Make sure that any partitions that you create are marked active before you reboot otherwise you can do it again!
6.) Make certain that you did steps 0 thru 5 in that sequence and none other especially if you're doing the re-format out of Linux from a terminal instance as shells seem to distract and lead users astray. I've helped people out on Ubuntu, Dream, and SUSE linux forums before and I know that little black terminal screen hypnotizes people and makes them do weird things -- stuff they weren't instructed to or supposed to do in the first place.
I know a good bit by trial and stupidity -- error has been upgraded. Welcome to the era of inconvenience.
Bit-Locker is accessible via the Control Panel Start Menu option and can be managed through the Programs and Features option of the Control Panel menu option. From the Programs and Features dialog you will look left at the quick link "Turn Windows Features On or Off"; click the link to open another dialog that will provide you with management options regarding Bit-Locker. To manage drive compression in Vista , it's just like XP, open your "Computer" Start Menu Option locate your Vista drive entry > right click it > select "Properties" from the dialog menu now, looking at the bottom of your drive properties dialog, locate and uncheck the "Compress this Drive to Save Space" check box > click the "Apply" button > click the "OK" button -- and you're ready to go. You can verify that the drive is no longer compressed by opening a folder in Explorer paying attention to folder and file names -- if the file and folder names are black text your drive is non-compressed but, if the text names are blue then your drive is still compressed.
You all need to keep crackin down on these here issues as I think G-Parted is pretty awesome stuff. Alot of commercial partitioning managers utilize alot of G-Parted technology -- bet some of you didn't know that. Take a gander around at some of the more well known partition managers as I think one of them that I'm referring to is Acronis, could be Paragon or, maybe both. I can't remember -- I'm tired.
Dream Linux and openSUSE use G-Parted -- sweet!
