Windows Vista Removing remnant Vista OS after upgrading to Vista 64

When building my PC about 1 year ago I purchased and installed Vista 64 (Home Premium), which I think required that I first installed Vista 32 or the upgrade disc came in the mail several weeks later. Either way, I originally created a ~60GB partition for the OS, and after installing 64 it left me with only several GB of HD space on the main partition because it appeared to not remove the original 32 OS. Everything has been running fine, but i'm now just under 1GB of available space because of updates and desktop files, and I would like to see if I can remove the remnant OS that appears to be wasting valuable space.

Thanks,
Andy

 

It is good that you are asking first. Deleting without checking can cause problems.

First check what Windows folders are there. Has the new installation set the old Windows folder as "defunct" or has it set a dual boot option to it?

It talks about Windows.old in these
How to use the Disk Cleanup feature to delete the Windows.old folder after you install Windows Vista
Windows Explorer crashes when you try to remove the $WINDOWS.OLD folder from a computer that has been upgraded to Windows Vista

I haven't confronted that situation for many years, so I won't make specific suggestions.

Let us know what you discover about the "defunct" Windows folder, but don't delete it until you are sure it is completely orphaned. If it is referred to in your boot files (like a dual boot), your Windows system might stop working.

The "old" (32bit) Windows folder could be called something different, like Windows.000 like in the old days or maybe even WinNT.

Try to keep your system "cleaned up ", you don't have much space left. Something I remember when I was deleting the old Windows folder, it didn't eventually leave me with as much space as I hoped.

Matt

 

Didn't find any additional Windows folders, here are the results of available options from Disk Cleanup (no action taken):

(Just 100MB or larger listed)
Hibernation File Cleaner 7.99GB
Debug Dump Files 643MB
System Error Memory Dump Files 653MB
Thumbnails 312MB

----------------------------------------------

Details on C: drive
56.9 GB used of 58.5 GB (1.66 GB free)

however, when viewing size of each folder directly under base path, only totaled 43.8 GB

C:\Program Files\ 803MB
C:\Program Files (x86)\ 3.73GB
C:\Users\ 8.67GB
C:\Windows\ 30.6GB
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ 1.06GB
C:\Windows\System32\ 3.14GB
C:\Windows\Microsoft.net\ 750MB
C:\Windows\assembly\ 1.26GB
C:\Windows\Winsxs\ 21.0GB

 

You can get rid of your Hibernation file, that will give you an instant 8GB of space. Also Debug Dump Files unless you are experiencing blue screens currently, thats another ~2/3 GB. The Windows Cleanup won't delete anything you cant live without.

Your additions don't seem to include the files on the root directory, like C:\pagefile.sys and C:\hyberfil.sys (hyberfil is the hybernation file).

You can make some space, but how much space can you make? Your Program Files folder is very "slim ", congratulations , I take it you are installing programs to another drive. What is the difference between Program Files and Program Files (x86)?

You should be able to move your Documents, Pictures and Music folders to another drive, I haven't tried it using Vista, read in Help and Support.

Try to work out if you have installed a completely new system or if you have just upgraded the from the old one. If you have upgraded, the system might be keeping a lot of "downgrade" files in case you want to go back to the previous system.

60GB might not be a very big amount of space for Vista 64 to work on. I run Vista 32 on 50GB, but it is not a typical system.

Matt

 

Good to know, thanks Arie.