partitioning - GParted allocation trouble on Win8.1/Ubuntu dual boot

After my old hard drive crashed, I decided to install Ubuntu alongside Windows 8.1 on my new drive (Windows was installed first, both with USB). Upon configuring Ubuntu, I partitioned about 698-ish Gb to Ubuntu and 232-ishGb to Windows.

As of then, partitions looked like this:

/dev/sda1 | ntfs | System Reserved | 350Mb

/dev/sda2 | ntfs | n/a | 232.54Gb

which are for Windows, and

/dev/sda3 | extended | 698.63Gb

which is for Ubuntu.

Now sda3 has subcategories, sda5 through sda6. sda5 held 690.76Gb, and sda6, the linux-swap, held 7.87Gb. These are all formatted as ext4.

As of late I've wanted to repartition my drives to store 750Gb on Windows and 250Gb (or however much will actually fit after what the system needs is taken; it's a 1Tb drive) on Ubuntu. So, I booted up my laptop with the USB I installed Ubuntu on, selected "Try Ubuntu without installing" and opened up GParted to resize things.

I started by shrinking sda5 to 250.00Gb, which worked perfectly. Then I had 440.76Gb of unallocated space, which I shifted to the left to it'd be next to sda2 enabling to me to expand it, thus expand Windows. But since it was unallocated, I couldn't expand sda2 into it in GParted or Windows Disk Management; I assigned a spot as sda7, but it required to have 1Mb of unallocated free space before it, which I couldn't remove...Analyzing that Mb of free space tells me its minimum size is 1Mb, but its maximum is 0Mb, and I can't change any values.

And I still can't expand sda2. Now, things look like this:

/dev/sda1 | ntfs | 350Mb

/dev/sda2 | 232.54Gb

/dev/sda3 | extended | 698.63Gb

>unallocated | unallocated | 1Mb

>/dev/sda7 | ext4 | 440.76Gb

>/dev/sda5 | ext4 | 250Gb

>/dev/sda6 | linux-swap | 7.87Gb

...Can anyone tell me what's going on? And if/how I can enlarge sda2?

Thanks so much!

As far as I'm concern, you have shrunk sda5, not sda3, so the allocated space (before creating sda7) is still inside sda3, and after being created, sda7 is inside sda3.

I suggest you delete sda7, shrink sda3 from the left, then you can enlarge sda2.