Windows – Move MSR partition

I just solved it, and I'll post the answer here in case someone else faces a similar problem.

I was unable to resize the partition because my swap space was still in use, so I found out I could disable it using swapoff -a.

After doing this, GParted allowed me to merge the unallocated space with the fedora logical partition. I then right clicked on the logical partition and selected the Check option.

Finally, I used the following to actually allocate the free space to the root and home partitions:

lvextend -L +20G /dev/fedora/home
lvextend -L +20G /dev/fedora/root
resize2fs /dev/fedora/home
resize2fs /dev/fedora/root

Short answer: Yes, you can move msr to another location with gparted, but you also will need to keep some conditions (described further), otherwise, Windows could not be booted.

I explored which conditions caused boot failure using virtual machines. Here are the facts:

• MSR may be anywhere physically at a disk space.
• It may have other number then was used originally for it.
• msr partition number can be greater than windows partition number

• There should not be any skipped partition numbers between msr and windows partition if msr partition number is smaller than windows’ partition number.
  To change partition number, use gdisk, type x, then t, then number of the partition, then new number which will be used for that partition, then w, then answer yes to write changes to drive.

• you can shrink (or move) windows partition (ntfs disk C) from the beginning and from the end without a problem (at least for gpt booting).

• Partition Type (GUID) is not necessary need to be Microsoft reserved. Windows successfully booted when I set it to Linux filesystem. But still it is better to set it correctly to easier identify this partition by yourself. In cgdisk its type is 0c01 which is E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE in gpt.
• Partition name is not important. Windows successfully booted when I set its name to another string. Originally it is set to “Microsoft reserved partition”.
• Partition unique GUID is not important. Windows successfully booted after this number was randomized.

What I did not tested is if it is possible to make it less than 16 Mib. If in gparted I moved a partition to the very end of the disk space, partition started displayed as 15 mb (I think the last sector is shorter than all other normal sectors) and after applying changes, it failed. Gparted refused to move that partition, because it does not know how to shrink “unknown filesystem”.