extpart problems

[MattS101]

In the past, I have never had any extpart issues. Yes, once in a while I might need to go to safe mode to run it, but that wasn't often.

Recently I started working with a new environment at another company and something is causing problems for extpart. I find myself needing to reboot to safe mode to run extpart EVERY SINGLE TIME!. This is very annoying in production environments when I have to do it after hours when I should be able to run it during the day.

My assumption is that there is some other program that is installed on all the systems or some misconfiguration somewhere, but I don't know what is causing it. Any ideas?

[jcwuerfl]

What is the OS your doing extpart on Win03 x32 ?

Here's a quick article on extpart

http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/howto-using-extpart-to-expand-windows-server-2003-vm-boot-volume

[MattS101]

Sorry, should have been a little more specific. That's a great article, and I've seen it in the past.

The OSes have been Windows 2003 server.

When I run extpart, I always get the "Unable to connect to c: or it does not exist" error. I don't have the disk manager running, and the problem occurs even after a reboot. The only way to get extpart to function properly is to reboot in safe mode and then run it. I've had to do this once or twice in the past in other VMWare environments, but in the current environment I'm working in, every single machine needs to be rebooted into safe mode every single time the drive needs expanding.

I was hoping someone would have some ideas as to what programs or configs or other issues could cause this. For example could the antivirus software do it (Symantec), or could some setup of Windows or VMWare be causing problems that cause every machine to need to go into safe mode to run extpart?

[jcwuerfl]

Not sure, but it sounds like from doing some searching on it that its a pretty common problem that people have, and they list those 2 workarounds. Closing Computer Mngr or reboot into save mode.

[joshp]

I know this is a really old post but 9 times out of 10 stopping the Windows Search service will allow the drive to be resized with extpart without rebooting or safe mode.

[genoIE]

I was able to stop the Indexing Service and the problem went away. 

[caser555]

Safemode worked for me.