Quote: Originally Posted by
SIW2 
When you install any version of Vista, she likes to drop her boot files in the first partition ( this is the one that is on the left in Disk Management ).
The Vista installer writes its boot files in whichever one of the primary partitions is marked Active. That's not necessarily the first partition. Any of the primary partitions can be set as Active (some partition managers call it "setting the partition's Boot Flag on").
There's no need to reinstall Vista if you don't want to.
To do what you want, you will need to use a non-Microsoft partition manager such as the freeware gparted which runs from a bootable CD.
GParted -- Download GParted -- Documentation
The following assumes your Ultimate partition is now a primary partition, not a logical drive in an extended partition.
In gparted, you would first delete the partition containing Vista Home. Then the area it was covering becomes "unallocated space".
If that deleted one was at the start of the disk, you should next move the Ultimate partition to the start of the disk. That way, all the unallocated space will be after it on the disk (right end of the diagram). You need to move it because you can only add space at the end of a partition, not at the start of it.
Then you can resize the Ultimate partition larger so it covers the whole disk, or if you prefer you can use the unallocated space to make a new NTFS partition to store data files.
If you end up keeping more than one partition, do one more thing while you are still in gparted: Right click the Ultimate partition > Manage Flags > set this partition's boot flag on (which makes it the Active partition).
Then quit from gparted and reboot.
Vista Ultimate probably won't boot from the hard disk after having its partition moved, so boot the Vista DVD and run its boot repair.
Startup Repair