Software :: Best Tool To Resize NTFS Partition With XP Installed On Vista?

What's the best tool or method to resize an NTFS partition containing Windows XP Home but with some evidence of being installed using Windows Vista? (Possible answer: Windows 7...) I bought a Fizzbook Spin, UK version of Intel Classmate PC with touchscreen. Disk is about 55 GB; I want to resize system partition C to about 17 gigabytes and then maintain it using something like partimage on live CD/DVD/USB for complete backup of volume: 15 gigabytes roughly compresses to one DVD, 2 gigabytes for hibernation memory storage which I won't back up (and can't move off C), pagefile on the next volume (probably 4000 MB on FAT32, an affordable commitment of disk space to buy not worrying about the page file size). Plus, I will be able to store the backup of volume C on volume D.

The machine can boot Linux (Knoppix 6.2) from external DVD drive, from a USB flash memory key, and from SD[?HC] card. I don't have a separate Windows install CD or recovery partition, but there's an Intel tool to generate a recovery, um, stick. There's evidence that XP's partition was created by Vista, as follows: 1 MB unused before the system partition; an error message about "correcting errors in the uppercase file" which apparently means "Vista did something on this disk that XP thinks is wrong, but this is not serious" - and several attempts to resize the volume with GParted have left Windows unbootable, blue-screening for a split-second and then rebooting. Apparently that's a Vista experience, and it would've been really bad if I hadn't taken a backup already.

I'm pretty sure that in at least one attempt, I remembered and successfully turned OFF the default-on "Round to cylinder" option in GParted... or is that WRONG? Standard Vista/Parted/resize advice (before 2010) such as [URL] seems to be "Use GParted, then use the Windows Vista installation CD to make your ruined hard disk partition properly bootable again." Since I don't have a Vista installation CD to use or legally borrow for this computer - unless I buy Vista or Windows 7 (which I'm considering anyway, for speech recognition) - I appear to be stuck. I do have more than one other XP computer, in case I can use something from there to exorcise the Vista-ness. But I want to keep the extra software (and device drivers) supplied with this little computer.