linux - increasing shrink space in windows 7

I am trying to install Linux on a machine that is currently running windows 7 home edition. I want to keep windows 7 and install windows in a partition. So I went to Disk Management, right-clicked on the drive, and clicked Shrink Volume.... But the resulting analysis shows that I can only shrink the volume by 2.3GB. So I deleted 30GB of space on the drive and clicked Shrink Volume again, but still got the 2.3GB limit. There are over 200GB free on the hard drive. How can I get windows 7 to safely create a 60GB partition in which I can then install Linux?

Answer

1. Turn off virtual memory (to get rid of pagefile)




2. Reboot




3. Turn off hibernation (to get rid of hiberfil.sys)




4. Defragment your disk (only if this is not SSD), this may take some time.




5. Shrink your partition.




6. Turn on virtual memory and hibernation




7. Reboot