Fresh install on vista ate up 30 gb???

So I just re installed vista home on my computer and did all the updates to get it back up to SP2, and my 40gb partition is only showing 10gb left. Where did it go?? I only added on AVG and Firefox yet. I didn't check it before these, but I should have more. I thought vista only used 15 gb. Thats half what I have used.

Thanks,
Walter

 

Yeah, Vista's like that. You can reclaim a few gigs by running vsp1cln.exe and compcln.exe. (Google them for instructions.)

You may also be able to shrink the system restore area if you want using the vssadmin command (Google it)... although in theory Windows should auto-shrink it as you need the space... I don't know how well that works in practice though.

Also, 64-bit Vista uses a few gb more than 32-bit Vista... just something to keep in mind.

 

A cleaned up recovery with Sony installs is about 15GB....

Run DiskCleaner as well and maybe clean out old system restore points - that will net you a few GB - but new ones will be written with time.

 

Eh, a clean install should NOT take that much space on your harddrive. Are you sure that you formated your disk before installing vista again ?

 

I think its system restore points... en masse...

 

Maybe. And if you like me are an SSD user and has disabled pagefile. You must manualy delete PageFile - file from Root of C. This will give you much space as your RAM.

 

I'd recommend keeping the page file turned on - those few GB wont change your life in terms of storage - but might change your life the occasion your laptop needs more memory than it has RAM.

 

I bet it is your windows.old folder. Its located in C:\ and delete the windows.old file (make sure you have everything you need out of it).

 

I have SSD drive and 4 GB of ram. I acctualy had some suttring in gTA IV with PageFile turned on. I had it on when I used "normal" HDDs. I agree that, if you have don't have a SSD drive you should keep it on.

This was what I meant by my first post. If he don't have formated his drive under installation the size of Windows will be dubled.

 

Keep in mind, most of the updates set a system restore point.

 

Even on a SSD its better to keep it on.

Guess what - I have a SSD too, and my pagefile is on - I have 4GB of RAM too.

 

Well, that is why I have System Restore OFF too

Acctualy, I try to minimize random write. And As I said, I noticed a 1-2 sec frezze under games. And sometimes, under GTA IV, when you go out and the "city" must "load" from short term you can see that HDD indicator goes crazy. And sometimes it loads very slowly etc. I turned it off, and not had that problem again. But maybe it was cused by a background progces or so.

And reason why I keep it off on my Lenovo is that I only have 30GB drive, and about only 1 GB left when I turn PageFile off. I gain those 4GB and get 5GB total freespace. I got some free place for music etc.

 

which should not happen on a fresh install. looks like it wasn't

as an ssd user, you should not disable the pagefile. + you should NEVER have the need to delete it manually. when you turn it off, the file is gone (by going the default way the os is designed to disable the pagefile).

i guess your problem is not the pagefile but the fact that you're at your disk limit. pagefile on vista/win7 does not get used as long as it's not needed. but the additional 4gb might make other write-outs of gta much slower, as your ssd is really at it's limit. no disk (hdd, ssd) should ever be filled over 90% if you don't want speed losses. yours was filled 97%. the pagefile wasn't the issue there, then.

 

The OP's concern was disk space. I wouldn't really recommend disabling the page file... although to save a little disk space, you'd probably be fine shrinking it to around 1.5 - 2 gb or so.

Of course it depends what programs you run and how much multitasking you do.

total virtual memory = physical mem + pagefile size.

 

if adjusting the pagefile has a big impact on system performance due to low disk space, one has a bigger problem than the pagefile indeed. disk space is too low for anything, then.

 

The 30GB disk is in my Lenovo, which I use at school. I can try to run diffrent benchmarks with ON and OFF. But, I realy don't care much about them. Real-world performance is much more important...

 

sure. but as said, if realworld performance differs, you reached some other limit. pagefile itself is not the fault (but might fix the problem for now). lack of storage itself is a big problem for the os.

 

Actually it will - after all Windows Updates

Especially if you end up starting with Windows Update rather than installing SP1 and SP2 first and then going through WIndows Update.

 

blasted winsxs

 

That is true. Anyway, I am going to leave it off for now.

 

hm right.. well, thanks to my homeserver, i have system restore always off. systems's pretty tiny, then.

 

if you put vista full on a old windows, it will move that in to a file renamed old windows. that will cause space to disappear and look like vista eat up space when in fact it didn't get rid of the old windows.