Thanks, Dave,
I quickly found that the W7 disk management system wasn't all that much help as I couldn't shrink the Windows partition enough to make it worthwhile doing anything, even on a completely new installation.
One reason I'd wanted to make extra partitions was to reinstall W XP for old software use, but read somewhere in the W7 notes on disk management that "the oldest OS should be installed first to avoid conflicts". Since I couldn't do this, I abandoned the idea altogether, availability of freeware or not.
Thanks anyway,
Ian