Maura van der Linden – Blog

When you install Vista on a computer that has a prior version of a Microsoft operating system on it, a lot of the information from the prior installation will be saved in a directory called Windows.old. If you have installed Vista multiple times, you may have more than one Windows.old directory.

Once your Vista install is up and seems stable, you may want to reclaim that space but will find you can’t merely delete the folder, even logged in as an administrator. There is a method provided to remove the directory but I didn’t know it until I stumbled upon it.

To remove the files from these old Windows installations, do the following.

1. Click on your Start button.
2. Click on Computer.
3. Right Click on your main hard disk.
4. Select Properties.
5. Click on the Disk Cleanup button.
6. Click on Files of all users in the popup.
7. Click on Continue.
8. Look through the list of file types and check the box next to Previous Windows Installation(s).
9. Click OK to perform the cleanup.

Hope this is helpful.

In my last post I spoke about how you can free up disk space if your Vista operating system appears to be consuming your hard drive space. As promised, here is some information on how change the disk space used.

One way to prevent that from happening is to turn off the automated creation of system restore points entirely but if you want to still have that fallback without all your drive space disappearing, there is a way to see how much space the system shadow copy is allowed to use and to change that limit.

This is a little more complicated because you have to use an elevated command window to do it. To open the elevated command window, do the following:

1. Click on your Start Button
2. Click on All Programs
3. Click on Accessories
4. Right click on Command Prompt
5. Click on Run As Administrator
6. Click on Continue to confirm

Once you have this command window open, you should check to see what your system is currently set to use for its shadow copy. To do that, you type the following, then press Return:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

This command will display information on each drive for which you have shadowstorage enabled. The last line in each set is the maximum size limit for the shadow storage. It’s typically set to be 10% of the total drive size but, in the case of a laptop I had running Windows Home Premium, it had that dreaded word – UNBOUNDED. Ack. Definitely something to change. If you have a very large drive, 10% of the entire drive may be a vast amount of overkill as well and you may want to reduce the max size.

To reset the size, from the elevated command window, you type the following and then press Return:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=6GB

This sets 6GB as the max size for the shadow copy of my C: drive, stored on my C: drive. If you leave maxsize= blank, then the limit becomes unbounded.

One of my computers is running Vista Home Premium edition and has a 65GB main drive. Since it’s one I only do limited things on (like writing), I saw no need to upgrade the operating system but, earlier this week, I looked at the hard drive space and noticed that it had suddenly gone down from about 30GB free to 1.5GB free. All this without my installing much in the way of new software or storing huge archives of documents.

Like any other person, my response was “What the heck?!?” Well, my response might have been a little more colorful, but you get the idea. After the surprise wore off and the usual suspects had been cleared, I proceeded to hunt around for an answer.

It turns out that one of the ways Vista protects your data and system is to create system restore points – to be able to restore your system to a previously stable state. It also keeps shadowcopies of your documents, in case they become corrupted. Usually Vista installs with a maximum space set (default is 10% of the total disk space, I believe). When this space is exceeded, Vista will begin deleting the oldest restore points and shadow copies to make room for the new ones.

For some reason, on the system this was happening on, the maximum size was set to unbounded. It could use ALL the space.

To clean up the files (but keep the last system restore point), you can perform the following:

1. Click on your Start Button.
2. Click on Computer.
3. Right Click on your main drive.
4. Select Properties.
5. Click on the Disk Cleanup button.
6. Select Files from all users.
7. Click Continue to authorize.
8. Click the More Options tab.
9. Click the Clean Up button under System Restore and Shadow Copies section.
10. Click Delete to confirm.

There is a way to set the size limit of the Shadow Copies yourself but it’s more complex and easier to mess up than is probably appropriate for this blog. You’re welcome to contact me using the Contact Form if you need me to tell you how to do it.