Vista SP1 gave me more HDD Space & Improved my Experience Rating!

Hi,

Just wondering if this has already covered, but:

Since installing my SP1 update, my PC now shows (32bit OS) that I now have 4GB RAM, whereas before it only showed 3.3GB.
My experience rating has gone from 4.6 to 4.7 AND my hard free space has increased from half free to two thirds free.... a huge gain!

WOW! or WTF?!

 

Good for you, but its not possible to utilize all 4gb of ram in a 32bit os. The experience rating is a horrible idea and doesnt mean worth squat. I also gained harddrive space when installing sp1, go me!

 

I have just checked my usage bar on the sidebar & it still shows 3696MB of ram. never mind, but its cool that it is detected in "system properties".

 

It's not cool at all. Many people will think that it can actually use 4GB, which is not true. It should of stayed the way it was.
I didn't got any HDD space after installing SP1. And quite frankly I don't see why you would gain space.

 

where can i download the vista service pack from ???

 

3rd link in my signature will get you to a post in which you can find a hack to download it via Windows Update. After you apply the hack you will have to install two more updates before being able to actually download the SP. Install those first, check for updates a couple of times until you see the SP, then install it. Other methods are not currently available without talking about torrents.

 

thanx........will download soon.........y cant i download it from microsoft ???

 

Because they haven't publicly made it available. It will be available for download in March (as many sources indicate, I believe Microsoft also says something about March), but earlier for people with MSDN access. You can also find other sources to download the standalone installer, but I am afraid that I can't post links here (1. because I don't have them, even though that's not a problem; 2. because it's against forum rules).

 

Your experience rating probably went up because it detected more RAM.

 

Vista SP1 FTW

 

You get more HD space because Vista clears out your restore points prior to installing SP1, or at least that is what I heard.

 

That seems to be the logical. Instead of magical space coming out of nowhere.

 

A change in SP1 is that 32-bit Vista now recognizes that you have 4GB RAM installed, although it still only uses 3.3GB.

 

I had a problem.

Earlier I was able to use VPN connection to hospital, now it gives me error. Tried reinstalling, nothing helps.

SP1 is otherwise ok.

 

Couldn't agree more!

Their change to saying 4GB in System Properties is only going to slow the adoption of 64bit as people will be going "I can use all of my ram as SP1 made it all show up"...

I'm sure all the OEMs wanted it since they seem to love shipping 32bit Vista Installs with 4GB of RAM, but MS shouldn't help them in their deciet. I can see a potential class action lawsuit against MS coming from this change...

 

Wow, I got 25 gigs back..........

 

Blasphemy!

 

That's a huge gain. Amazing, this sp1 might not be so bad after all. I think I will wait until it becomes available in the automatic windows update. But that's cool though...

 

Ya I had about 149 gigs free and now I have 176.

 

For all those that "got space back", keep in mind that the free space isn't coming out of thin air, something is being deleted (be it old restore points or something else) to warrant such a large increase in free space.

Does anybody have any definitive answers as to what is being deleted?

 

All I know is that when I do a fresh reformat (with vLite'd Vista), I am now getting closer and closer to Windows XP install size.

 

I don't think it says anywhere, but the only things that could really give back that much space would be deleting restore points and shadow copies.

I have seen myself gain up to 10Gb of space from deleting restore points and up to 6Gb from shadow copies. For someone with a larger HD who probably doesn't ever clean those out themselves, 25 Gb sounds reasonable.

 

Yea that sounds about right. With shadow copy taking up a default max of 15% of your hard drive space, gaining ~25 GB on a 160 GB is about right. Plus some amount for deleting old restore points.

I was just wondering if there was some documentation that said that SP1 would do this, but I guess not yet.

 

so how do you clear restore points and the shadow copies manually ?

thanks !

 

Right-click on the primary drive, go to properties. Click disk cleanup. After the new Disk Cleanup window finishes loading, click the "More Options" tab at the top. In the 'System Restore and Shadow Copies', click cleanup. Then click ok. And it should delete them all, freeing up lots of HDD space.

 

Beat me to it. As a side note, you have to select the admin option when you select Disk Cleanup or else the "more options" tab won't show up.

 

I beleive the SP1 install resets any System Restore points you had and creates one prior to the install. This would account for some folks gaining some space.

Gary

OK. OK. I was "late to the game" and reponded before I read to the end of the thread.

 

I believe so, I had like 3 or 4 restore points before update to SP1,
after update, it showed only 1, says" installed Service Pack 1"

 

I installed SP1 on a Latitude 620 I use at work. I had 62 gigs of free space prior to the install, and I have 60 gigs of free space after the install. I had turned off System Restore prior as one of the Tweaks. So far its running fine. I didnt get any increases in the Ratings (only thing that helped it a bit was updating the video driver).