I lost 4-5GB after my first Vista Update

WTH?

Over the weekend I decided to to a fresh Vista Premium install. I have a 160GB unformatted drive, formatted it's 149GB. After Vista completed the installation I was left with 135GB. I have a Vostro 1500 with 4GB of ram btw.

OK so I deleted the 4GB hibernation file and turned off system restore. I get back my 4GB so i'm back to 139GB of free space out. I went to update Vista and when I did my first batch of updates I rebooted and i'm back to 134GB. Good grief is Vista totally out of control?

Btw I did another fresh install and turned off system restore, deleted the hibi file and got the same results. And Microsoft wonders why the general consensus amongst the public is Vista sucks. How could you possibly bloat a 15GB operating system. Oh wait we're talking Microsoft here, I forgot.

Has something changed recently with the Windows installer that it would allocate 4-5GB of disk space after the first update?

 

the only thing i can think of is that microsoft is running out of space for storing their next operating system and they unloaded some of it on to their trusty consumers

but seriously, maybe it automatically created a backup of the system thats the only viable reason i can think of

 

It might be that there's shadow copies of your files. If you launch the disk cleanup file in the System Tools folder, click on the "More Options" tab, it'll give you the option of deleting all system restore files and shadow copies. That might clear up quite a bit of space.

 

I did a restore point purge prior to turning off system restore. I also did the same thing after the update even though system restore was turned off and no luck. It was still stuck at 134GB.

LOL !

 

What most likely happened is that Vista deleted your previous restore points. Vista takes up 15-30% of your hard drive space for restore.

 

You lost me.

I started out with 135GB after the initial install. I deleted all restore points, turned off System Restore, deleted my Hibernation file and gained 4GB. So i'm now at 139GB.

I perform the first batch of Vista updates and I lost the 4GB I initially gained. System Restore was never turned back on.

 

System Restore and Indexing, are the two big hitters.

By any chance did you install SP1 and then not clean up afterwards?

 

The first thing I did was turn off indexing, system restore and the hibernation file. Keep in mind I lost the 4-5GB way prior to even installing SP1.

Very puzzling indeed. Anyway I recovered my lost 14GB of data by going back to Windows XP and I installed Windowblinds 6 along with the Vista U Brico Pack. It's hard to tell it's not Vista and all without the bloat.

 

just deleted system restore and shadow copies and gained 11GB!!

 

Well, actually you may have gotten 14GB of free space, not 14GB of recovered lost data.

And you are not doing a Vista install from one of those OEM vendor disks that recreates the recovery partition, right?

 

how do you delete system restore and shadow copies??

 

You turn off those services and restart.

 

Start > Programs > Acessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup

Go to the More Options tab and you can delete all those temporary files in there

 

Like i mentioned earlier it had no effect and I did not gain any disk back. And now for the weird and wacky. I used my OEM Vista U disk and the first update did not steal 4-5GB like my Dell Vista P does.

I reformatted and used the Dell disc that came with the system and the problem came back.

And once again I turned off indexing along with System Restore and Shadow Copies.

 

Those OEM vendor disks restore back to out-of-the-box state, including the (often hidden) recovery partition. I am not at all surprised that the "problem" was recreated when using them.

 

It only happens when I do the first update and it didn't create a hidden partition because I checked for that as well, although good suggestion.

The Dell Vista P disc only has the OS on it.

 

Even so, the out-of-the-box state would have restore points and indexing on. Also, the SP1 update to Vista creates it's own restore point irrespective of your settings that you can clean up yourself if you choose to do so.

 

Once again this only happens with the first batch of updates and way before SP1 is even called up in the download queue. As soon as I perform the first series of updates I lose 4-5GB and that's with System Restore turned off. The problem doesn't happen if I use my retail OEM disc.

 

Ahhhhhh! I bet you have not configured Shadow Copy Storage to reduce the amount it reserves. I turned it off.

 

I entered vssadmin list shadowstorage and I got back the following:

"No items found that satisfy the query."

Which doesn't surprise me since System Restore shuts off both restore points and shadow copies when I turned it off. Something else took 4GB of disk space and i'm still trying to find why. It's almost as if another 4GB swap file was created. Although I know that's not the case.