- 1). Shut down the Windows virtual machine if it is currently running, as VMware will otherwise lock external access to the virtual hard disk drive. Additionally, the virtual machine must shut down gracefully or the virtual drive will stay unlocked until the virtual machine has completed a good power cycle.
- 2). Find the settings menu under the VM tab on the main menu. Locate the hard drive you want to expand, and find the utilities button. Click the "Utilities" button and click the “Expand…” option, which will display a window that will allow you to change the size of the partition to your preferred new size.
- 3). Relocate the utilities button once the expand tool has finished running, and click on the "Map..." button, opening a utility to mount the virtual disk as if it were a real drive. Click "OK" to continue, changing the default drive mapping from Z to another letter if it were to cause a conflict error.
- 4). Confirm the disk is properly mounted through the disk management tool in the Windows control panel. Insert the Linux live CD into your CD drive, or mount the ISO onto a virtual disk drive. Create a new virtual machine within VMware and set it to boot directly from the live CD. You may also need to set the new virtual machine to be able to access the other virtual hard disk drive, by adding a reference to it under the "Shared Folders..." option.
- 5). Boot into the Linux live CD letting it run until it reaches the desktop. Find the disk partitioning tool, usually hidden under the administrator settings, and start the utility. Once it has loaded you should be able to see the mounted Windows virtual hard disk, click on it and select the "Expand.." option from the main menu, allowing you to increase the disk space up to the limit set earlier in Step 2.
- 6). Shut down the Linux virtual machine, dismount the Windows disk from the VMware software and boot the Windows virtual machine back on. Before you are able to load to the desktop, Checkdisk.exe will run to confirm the disk hasn't been damaged. Once this is finished you can check the expand process has worked through the "My Computer" window.
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