>>Be aware that even if you're successful in shrinking the XP partition, you'll probably have to at least image the Vista partition, blow it away, combine the new free space plus old Vista partition then restore the image to the new, larger partition. Vista may not like this - either being in a larger partition or at a different starting sector on the HD, either due to its boot process or due to its copy protection. You may end up having to reinstall Vista on the new larger partition.
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>I guess that once I have a separate partition I can merge it with Vista's from Vista's own Disk Management console. But I have to do that first.

If you're successful in shrinking C:, the new partition will be "below"/"before" the start of the existing Vista partition. If it was "after" the Vista partition it could be added to V: without too much problem. But I'd be surprised if Vista could "merge" these partitions as you're hoping it might :/ If it can handle that scenario, let me know - it'll be a first for me.

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>Thanks a lot for the ideas. I'll tell you how it goes.

Good luck!