Windows7 Upgrade not going so well

Hello,

I have a Thinkpad x61s notebook with Vista. I wanted to upgrade to Win7. First I backed up all my data. I bought Windows7 Upgrade edition, did the install, when prompted I chose "custom" and not "upgrade" because I wanted to do a clean totally fresh install. Then I ran Windows Update.

I installed nothing else.

At this point Windows7 took up 40GB. I used disk clean to delete the windows.old folder. I then used it to delete restore points.

Now Windows7 is taking up 30GB. I want it to be closer to 10GB, so I can create a disk image and install an SSD. 30GB is a bit big for that. Burning a 30GB image to DVD is inconvenient because it takes up so many disks, and space is kind of tight on the SSD, so every GB counts. Does anyone have any suggestions.

I'm so disappointed that I'm considering going out and buying the Full Windows7 disk. Meaning buying this upgrade would of been a stupid waste of money.

Thanks.

 

The "upgrade" and "full" disc is the exact same disc. The serial keys are just different. I don't think you will see a difference in the installation size.

A "custom" install is also the same thing as a "full/clean" install, but you already know that.

You can Google on how to limit the size on restore points or disable it entirely. That's all I can think of right now that can save you some hard drive space.

However, most people with the Windows 7 32-bit version takes up 16GB and most with the Windows 7 64-bit version takes up 20GB. I don't know why yours is 30GB (maybe, restore points?). You could probably have a lot of old data saved on your hard drive too.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx

 

Using the Win7 Upgrade disk I installed in the SSD. I was curious if it would activate, I had read that it might. Anyways the activation didn't work, but the install only took up 10GB.

 

Ok I turned off system restore.
Windows7 is now taking up 28 GB.
Any other suggestions?

 

Sometimes what I've found on Windows Vista/7 installations, especially on larger volumes, is that the Volume Shadow Copy Service can suck up a huge chunk of your hard drive. What you can do to make sure this isn't your culprit is to type CMD into the search bar on the start menu, right-click on the application and select run as admin, then type in "vssadmin." This will show a list of commands you can use. You'll probably want to use the "vssadmin list shadowstorage" and find out how much is being used by that process, and then use "vssadmin resize shadowstorage."

Let me know if that helps!

Edit: Wanted to include the source of this information.

 

nLite and vLite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

vLite vLite - Windows Vista configuration tool is meant for Vista but it should work with Win7 somehow. Also there is some nice information at the vLite forum, saw couple threads about shaving excess off Win7.

If you can make that work, tell us how it goes since I believe some others want to do that too.

 

I'd say do it the way where it's 10GB, then call Microsoft to get it activated.

 

Thank you all for your suggestions.

Here's what I ended up doing. At the suggestion of the guy at my local computer store I installed Windows7 using the Upgrade disk for a second time on the SSD.

So, using the Upgrade disk, the first time I installed Windows7 choosing the "custom" option, then installed it again choosing the "upgrade" option. It activated just fine.

The Thinkpad x61s with a clean Windows7 install and a SSD is great, very snappy.

Paul Thorrott's article on Windows7 installs was also helpful.