Guide to Extend the C:\ Partition of a Windows Server 2003 Server on VMware without downtime.

Step 1: Download Dell’s Extpart Utility – Extpart Utility Download
Step 2: Extract Extpart to a directory of your choosing. I chose “C:\Extpart”
Step 3: Confirm you have enough disk space on your datastore for the additional space.
Step 4: Open a command prompt and navigate to the directory where you saved the extracted executable “extpart.exe.” In my case
cd c:\extpart
Step 4: Now run extpart.exe from the command prompt.
Step 5: when it asks you to enter the “new volume size” enter the size you’d like to increase in Megabytes. (IE, 1GB=1024, 2GB=2048, etc) – GB to MB Converter
Step 6: Confirm that the C:\ was properly extended.

Errors – Unable to connect to C:\ or it does not exist”

To fix this try these methods:
Step 1: Close Windows Disk Management console. It’s using Logical Disk Management service which extpart.exe is using.
Step 2: Make sure there are no snapshots
Step 3: Try stopping non-essential services:
• Windows Search
• Indexing Service
• File Replication service
• DFS Replication service

Screen Shots below:

In this example I will extend my Server 2003 VM’s C:\ by 5GB=5120MB
1. Already Downloaded, extracted extpart.exe to c:\extpart diretory
2. Ran extpart.exe and attempt to extend C:\ but got error:

3. Only stopped the Windows Search service. Had to close command prompt and start over, else it wouldn’t work.

Ran extpart.exe again after closing and reopening command prompt and retrying.

Success!

Hope this helps!