Anyone explain this Vista 64 problem?

Hi

First time poster and hope this is the correct place.

I have been using Vista Ultimate x64 for the last 5 months and have to say it's been a massive learing curve due to its fragility - 4 full rebuilds in the last 4 months - and not much fun when using SATA RAID.

Anyway, got up yesterday morning, turned on the computer and it had managed to corrupt itself yet again: Windows Defender, Windows Picture Viewer and a host of desktop icons refused to find their pathways home and so decided against a full rebuild and started the repair option with a boot to the DVD. I set this off running and went to work at 12:30pm...

I came back 5 hours later and still had the dialog box " Finalising Registry" running on my screen! Well, a quick restart and i tried the upgrade option once back in Vista from the DVD. This then took and unbelievable 7 hours to complete and was finally ready - after updates - at 01:20am this morning, but a full clean install would have taken about 1-2 hours to finish, so i'll be doing that in future!

Now, everything seems ok and all icons and programmes are 100%, but i've checked my main drive and i've lost some GIG: my SATA RAID drives come in at 153GB and yesterday i had 108GB left, but today after the upgrade option, i have 97.3GB left, even though i have not put any other progammes in?!

Is this to do with the upgrade copying files/ folders twice? I looked in my drive with folder options showing hidden folders but can't see any doubled-up files. I'm currently running the appalling Vista disk defrag - bring back XP! - and it's been going now for nearly 4 hours and the disc percentage of usage is slowly dropping!

Specs are:
C2Duo E6600
Evga 650i Ultra M/B
BFG 8800 640mb GTS OC2
4GB DDR2 Geil PC3200
SATA RAID 153GB Hitachi drives

Any help in freeing-up some space would be appreciated, thanks.

Hi Splosher,

Welcome to the forum.

A chunck of that space went to the hidden C:\Windows.old folder. You can delete this folder directly, or use the normal method with Disk Cleanup. See step 23 & 24 in this tutorial for more on this. This is just a backup of the previous installation.

How to Do a Clean Install of Vista From a Upgrade Version


Shawn

Many thanks for reply and i'll have a look now for the folder as disk clean-up isn't doing it. Also, i left the disc defrag going and have got back and i now have 98.1GB left on drive!

Cheers

Quick update

Can't find windows.old folder anywhere and my hard drive has now dropped to 96.9GB - is it possible there are 2 installs of Vista on this drive and only one's showing-up? ( 28GB x 2 = 56GB the amount that's missing).

Splosher,

This may be System Restore. You can use Disk Cleanup to just delete all but the last restore point. See step 15 in this tutorial for how.

How to Use Disk Cleanup in Vista

You can also adjust Max disk space System Restore can use to. This tutorial will show you how.

How to Change the System Restore Disk Space Usage in Vista

Of course, you could just simply disable System Restore all together and not worry about how much space it is not using anymore. Without System Retore, be sure to keep up to date backups just in case. This tutorial will show you how.

How to Disable or Enable System Restore in Vista


Is your computer a HP brand? If it is, then HP has it's own version of system restore called the HP Backup and Recovery Manager. You can uninstall it.

Shawn

Hi

Many thanks for replies and it was manually deleting all but the latest system restore that freed-up the space, so all is good once more... until next time!

I built the computer myself and i suppose i'm glad i've had so many problems with Vista because i've learnt a lot about the operating system which can only be beneficial for the future.

Again, cheers for help and i'm sure you'll be hearing from me next time there's a problem.

Splosher,

Glad to hear you got the space freed-up. Whenever you have a question, just post it. Someone or myself will be sure to answer. Thank you for the feedback.

Shawn

Also Shadow copy takes up loads of room. I think there is a dos command to alter how much space is allocated to Shadow Copy, but cant remember it off hand. I know I googled it and found the answer when I was having space problems....

coolchris said:

Also Shadow copy takes up loads of room. I think there is a dos command to alter how much space is allocated to Shadow Copy, but cant remember it off hand. I know I googled it and found the answer when I was having space problems....

Click to expand...

Hi Chris,

It's the same as the one for System Restore. They share the same space and use the same service.

How to Change the System Restore Disk Space Usage in Vista

Shawn

Ooops. Thought they were different. Cheers.