Vista SP2 - HDD has 30GB more free?!

I had 137GB of free space on my HDD this morning. I just installed Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and now I have 167GB of free space.
How did this happen? I take it as a good thing as long as I didn't lose anything important. Can someone explain how I gained 30GB of free space?

Thanks

 

It is so weird. Somehow, some people successfully free-up HDD space like a few GBs using complcln.exe.
However, I got only 500MB++ freed up.

 

ya I've heard of a gig or two, but 30??!! I'm happy with the new free space, but what was deleted? Was it just old Windows files?

 

its most likely old windows files that was never cleaned out. if you ran something like ccleaner often i think it would be the same

 

I find it weird because I run CCleaner and defrag often along with taking good care of my PC and keeping it clean. I guess there were some extra Windows files that weren't needed that we're just taking up space. I never did a clean install of Vista when I got it, so maybe SP2 cleaned up some extra files. My computer came pre-installed with SP1, fyi.

 

Compcln.exe cleans up everything on Windows - if you left a rather large mess in the course of the last months/years then it'll delete a lot.

Davepermen is investigating a suspicion on what get's cleaned

So if it cleaned up little it means you've been taking good care of your OS - if it cleaned up a lot it means you left a mess

 

It might be the previous system restore points.

 

I take good care of my computer and keep it clean. I'm glad to get the 30GBs but what should I do to keep my computer clean from here forward? I thought I was cleaning good, but apparently not if it just cleared 30GB.

BTW, i'm not the only one reporting 30GB of space. Look:

http://www.notebookforums.com/post3049886.html#post3049886

 

You could have been installing/deleting a lot of things - that leaves junk, above mentioned system restores, unused dlls.

Just be happy

 

ok thanks

Read this:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Vist...Notable-Changes-in-Service-Pack-2-99976.shtml

 

Hmmm interesting.

 

It seems like Microsoft created a nice little cleanup tool. I gotta say, 30GB of free space is fine with me

 

The installation wipes out all of your previous restore points since none of them would work anyway after SP2 was in place.

Gary

 

People are reporting GAINS in system storage? I lost about 6-5 gigs when I installed. This worries me because I have Vista on a 50 GB partition and only 16 GB remain.

 

The only reason folks are seeing any gains is because their old System Restore points were deleted. (If they run the SP2 cleanup they may see a bit more gain too.)

Gary

 

it does affect winsxs, too, but couldn't measure much difference yet, as the system i was testing didn't have a big winsxs folder anyways.

so much for investigating

 

I keep good care of Windows and gained 1 GB after running Compcln.exe after SP2.

 

Not necessarily just system restore points. I clean out old system restore points using Disk Cleanup weekly, and I still gained 30GB of space. The SP2 does more:

 

Did you run the Service Pack Clean-up tool (Compcln.exe) before you noticed the 30 gig improvement? I didn't think the tool was run automatically.

When you installed SP1 there was a similar tool to remove the RTM components SP1 had replaced, did you run that tool after SP1?

Gary

 

I didn't run any clean up tool after SP1. But I didn't manually run Compcln.exe after SP2 either. I think it was automatic. It must've been...

 

hey i was wonderin if sp2 was an official release and if it provided any benefits.

 

Yes it was official. downloaded through windows update. and i have not seen any noticeable improvements, but better to be on the latest and greatest.

 

I just installed SP2 and noticed that my machine regained a whopping 50-70GB of disk space (can't remember original amount, but it's roughly in this range).

Meanwhile, I do notice some performance improvements in boot up time. I have a ton of startup applications and by the time everything's loaded, there's upwards of 90+ programs running in the foreground/background. Everything so far looks to be working just fine, if not quicker by a bit.

 

According to Microsoft, Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 RTM/SP1:

- adds support for the 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) from VIA Technologies, which adds the ID and vendor strings for the new VIA 64-bit CPU;
- integrates the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, which contains support for Bluetooth v2.1. Bluetooth v2.1 is the most recent specification for Bluetooth wireless technology and Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration;
- improves performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode;
- adds new capabilities to Direct X Graphic display reliability. The graphics experience has been greatly improved for users, such as gamers, running applications that require a lot of graphics processing;
- includes updates to the RSS feeds sidebar with improved performance and responsiveness;
- improves audio and video performance for streaming high definition content;
- includes ability to record data to Blu-Ray media;
- includes Windows Search 4.0;
- improves Windows Media Center (WMC) in Content protection for TV;
- Hyper-V is now integrated into Windows Server 2008;
- delivers up to 10% boosted efficiency via improved power management policy configurations;
- improves backwards compatibility for Terminal server license keys.


Along with a cleanup utility that freed up 30GB of space on my HDD

 

I hope you mean 90+ processes and not programs. Your disk space gain was most likely from restore points being cleared and my boot up time is much slower than it was with SP1.

 

RAM use went down to - at least for me.

Oh, and a few things broke... Audi (X-Fi Go, Java) - but reinstalling them fixed it...

 

How come you didn't notice that you're missing 30GB free space on hard disk and investigate what's taking the space?
I mean if you know how much space takes Vista usually, it's not hard to notice that a 39GB is occupied on C:.

 

No one said it was missing. They knew it was being consummed. But after the SP2 cleanup, some older archived stuff was deleted as it was no longer applicable. This results in the 30 gb of recovered stuff. For those of us who ran the manual cleanup after SP1, we are not seeing this much space gain.

Gary

 

That's what I meant... 90+ processes.

I figured that the cleanup was due to all the system restore points prior to the installation were deleted. Either way, I wasn't mad that it was being used up as I have a whopping 600GB drive anyway that's only about half full. Disk space is very cheap now-a-days.

 

mine is freed from 260GB to 320GB ... when I ran the compcln.exe it frees up another 1 GB ... sweet ..

 

thanks for the info jpz.

it's weird cuz i'm still on sp1 and when i do, do a windows update i don't see any sp2 packages except for a few compatibility packages for power point and office. my desktop downstairs still has vista sp0? i can't get it to update to sp1 for some reason. what would u guys recommend me do? i have tried to get the sp1 package from the microsoft website, followed the instructions, and still couldn't get it to update.

 

I'm already down to 147GB of free space. I had 167 after installing SP2. All I've downloaded is a few songs. What is making me lose all the space I gained with SP2? I run CCleaner often and clean up my old System Restore Points. Any ideas?
It seems like whatever extra junk was removed with SP2 is slowing adding back up.
What should I do to regain my space?

Thanks

 

Have you had any additional updates installed, including updates to other programs?

 

The same exact thing happened back when I installed SP1. Also, my SP2 installation failed, but it still freed up the 30GB of disk space. My guess is that it is some combination of Windows Restore images and other backup files that the OS protects from cleaner programs.

 

Nothing major. A few minor updates to Windows Defender and a new driver, but nothing substantial. Over the past few weeks since I've installed SP2, I'm been slowing losing the space I gained. I had 137 before I installed SP2, 167 after installation, and have slowly gone down to 147GB, which is where I'm at now.

Ya, it must be windows files that are just piling back up. I wish I knew what it was so I could clean it out.

Has anyone found out what exactly was cleaned up when SP2 was installed? If so, then maybe we could go to that folder and clean it regularly.

 

Honestly, whay do you bother?
You still have enough space left.

 

Have you checked your drive to make sure that it's not beginning to fail, and is racking up massive amounts of bad sectors (I realize that wouldn't account for the increased space right after installing SP2, but it might account for the rapid loss of space thereafter).

Also, you could make your hidden and system files visible, then do a search on the system drive for files that have recently changed, and see if there are any monsters showing up.

 

Well, at the very least there's still the intellectual challenge of figuring out what's using up that space.

 

Code:

Well, at the very least there's still the intellectual challenge of figuring out what's using up that space.:)

Ya, it's not that I need the space- I'm just wondering where it's going.

The drive seems to be functioning fine. My computer is less than a year old and I haven't had any HDD problems. I think it's just Windows files building back up.
I might try your idea about checking to see recently changed files.

 

ive tried and failed to install sp2 3 times. two from WU and 1 from the stand alone package. i am going to wait until the bugs are worked out of sp2. sp1 for now.

 

I wouldn't think its the drive - and SMART data is inconclusive - you may still want to look at it.

An nice tool to do so - installation free too is crystaldisk info - reads USB drives as well
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

 

The bugs are in your current installation, which is borked somewhere (that or you're trying to install with insufficient permissions), not in SP2.

 

my C partition is 111gb with 52gb free before install of sp2
sp2 download size 348mb.
now here's where it get's strange after install of sp2 i now have 75gb of free space.

All is working as it should (vista home basic 32bit).
also have a fewer processes running.
less indexing.
more free ram.
has microsoft finaly been listening to it's users and removed some junk.
ps. internet connection when coming out of sleep connects faster.
start-up time seems quicker and shut down.

has anybody else installed sp2 and found there laptop quicker ?


im well happy with sp2

laptop Acer aspire 5735z with 3gb ram. T3400 dual core.

 

The more-space topic has already been thrashed to death on this thread and the faster-or-slower-after-SP2 issue has been debated to a fairtheewell on that thread and at least one other thread regarding SP2. I'm not really sure if we need to do that all over again in another new thread.

 

ok will get admin to remove it....thanks for the link Shyster

 

I merged them.

 

I'm down to 143GB now. It seems like I've lost all that I gained with SP2. I'm going to run CrystalDiskInfo soon but I'd also like to use a program that will allow me to see where I'm losing this space. If it continues on its current path, I'll lose about a gig a day so hopefully I can found out where the space is going. What program do you recommend?

Thanks

 

Probably Windows restore. It is set by default to take up 15% of the HDD space and restore is only deleted after 150 years.

 

I've cleared out my Windows Restore points up to the most recent one and I still have 143GB free.

 

Interesting

I want to update, but the only thing holding me back is that the visual styles I use in SP1 won't work in SP2

Guess, I can always try, because I could really use the extra HD space