What can i get away with deleting after Vista install?

Soldato
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I need to free up 1.5Gb of space from my root drive to install Vista SP1. I was a little stingy with my initial paritioning :p :rolleyes:

Why the hell does it need 7Gb of space!?

I thought i'd guessed a root partition size of 20Gb as pretty conservative, but apparently not, i'd rather not "waste" anymore space on this partition though as everything else is stored elsewhere and this has a 5.5Gb padding worth of free space as it stands which i think should be more than enough!

What can i delete then? I've looked at the help files they come to 120mb, but after that i'm at a loss... :(
 
It probably doesn't help much but have you tried disk cleaning? It's surprising how much space you can clear up this way with Vista. After just 1 month since installing vista I managed to clear 2Gb just doing using disk cleaning on the root partition.
 
Sorry forgot to mention, i've already done that, turned of system restore, switched of the recycle bin, and turned of hibernation. That saved me over 3Gb or more in total, but i've hit a wall now... Why the hell are doze installs so HUGE! =/

My windows folder is about 10Gb there must be something i can get rid of there, like uninstall files for minor updates? Where do they hide now days?

//Edit:Right found MSOCache, thats gone now, i'm bang on 6Gb now, so just 1Gb to go!
 
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If you have another partition you can move the entire virtual memory to that and save at least a few Gb on the root partition (just don't turn it off!), if there's space left on the windows partition after SP1 installed then move it back.

Right click on My Computer then go to properties, then go to advance system settings and click on performance settings under Advance tab.
 
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Steve you're a genius! I'd completely overlooked my pagefile! Just freed up over 3Gb, i've got well over 9 floating about now! Loads of room :) Cheers matey, i can now set widows update and leave it going until i get up in the morning...
 
I am trying to use V-Lite to get rid fo the drivers that are stored in
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository

1.5gig of files there :mad:

I am going through each one to see what I can get rid of
and make a smaller ISO.
 
I am trying to use V-Lite to get rid fo the drivers that are stored in
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository.

Just remove them all, and manually install drivers you know you need.. intel infs, nvidia/ati etc.. if you already have the drivers to hand, then you don't need any of the ancient Vista RTM ones.

managed to get my Vista image down to 800mbs and fully useable so far :)
 
Why dont you use the drive management tool to enlarge the partician?

This is the answer. Vista behaves like partition magic and can alter partitions without nuking the data.

Are you really that desperate for disk space?
 
No i'm not that desperate for disk space, i've got a 100+Gb home partition next to this root partition, the root doesn't need to be any bigger. Now i've freed the space up i've got 7Gb still left over, i can remove the SP1 setup files, put my pagefile and hibernation file back on and still have ~3Gb of growing room on my root partition which is more than enough since i'm already running everything i probably will be anyway. Meaning i'm getting the most out of my hard drive space (laptop here so its limited compared to throwing anoter in like desktops...)

On another note there are 1.5Gb worth of useless drivers for me in temp and another similar amount in driverstore, and i can't delete any even in safe more, whats going on there? According to some sites its as easy as highlighting and pressing delete if you believe them?
 
just remember to run that cleanup command after installing sp1 to save a but more space (removes temp files needed to uninstall sp1).
 
oh yeah.. last time I ran ccleaner after a fresh Vista install, it removed ~2GB of temp files etc, so you may want to give it a go.. great little app :)
 
i will be running the cleaner but i don't think you read this quite right, initially i was trying to make room for my sp install... Its on now and everything is back where it should be, well untill sp2 is out! Although i would like to she the driverstore of the useless drivers... Can't seen to get that done though...
 
I ddin't think that would be possible, because of the way i've set this up. Ive got 160Gb drive.
~20Gb root partition, followed by a ~120Gb home partition followed by ~10Gb ubuntu partition.
But the i've already pretty much filled the home partition, its got about 100Gb's worth of media on it now, so resizing sounds dubious to me, all i needed was 1Gb anyway... Moving the pagefile was perfect and probably quicker than resizing in this case.
 
bad idea to have pagefile not on the primary partition, fine to have it on another drive, but bad to have on different partition

just use vlite mate, foreign languages take up a LOT of space

vsp1cln for removing sp1 removal files, make sure things like offline files & shadow copies are off too
 
You've missed the point, i don't want it on another parition, and i don't mind not having 10Gb of free space after i've installed SP1, if i'd thought SP1 would have kicked up such a fuss i would have vlited my install further but i'm about to format for SP1 :p, i just need to makeshift some free space for a short time while SP1 installs, pagefile and hibernation turned back on and live where they should. Everything is dandy :) Also i'm running 4Gb so although there will always be pagefil usage, its use will be faily minimum i'd hope too, being on another partitions while i just install SP1 for a short period wouldn't put me at any "risk".
Cheers guys :)
 
Can you move partitions in Vista as well as expanding/shrinking them, or does that require a separate app?

Alex, you think you've got problems - I've got 9GB free on my OS partition and 982GB free on my other two! Oops :(
 
Nah thats the way it should be, OS/root partitions as small as poss with all your apps, and everything else media related on the big ass separate home partition. I've got my 50+Gb music and gigs of films downloads and documents etc... all stored on my home partition, makes formating a simple case, and backing up and imaging etc... nice and easy too :) I think 20Gb was a pretty conservative guess, but i seem to be cutting it fine now :p
 
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