Windows 7 - Not enough space for upgrade installation

Hey,

I'm running build 7077 (x86) on my netbook, which has a 16GB hard drive. Windows 7 itself takes up just enough of the drive that there's not enough space left over to perform an upgrade installation to a newer build.

So tell me: is there any way to trick Windows into using an external hard drive (instead of the primary internal drive) for temporary storage during an upgrade installation?

Thanks!

- Phil

first delete the pagefile and the hibernate files, that should clear up enough space for you.

I know this is going to make me sound like a total n00b, but I have absolutely no idea how to delete either of those things, so if you could point me in the right direction...? Just as an FYI, those two things would have to be taking up 10GB of space to be causing the problem; is that even possible?

maybe possible since you have 8GB of RAM.

Enable show hidden and system files (My Computer > Tools > Folder options > View) then you can see the size of the pagefile.sys and hiberfile.sys

how much free space do you have on the drive now?

to turn off hibernate you need to run a command from the cmd prompt (as an administrator)

"powercfg -h off" without the qoutes

they you can delete the hiberfile.sys file that is in the root of C:
turn on "hidden files" to see it.

once you show hidden files you will also see the pagefile.sys, you can safely delete it and then try installing the newer build.

Yes there is look in tutorials for installing from usb
Ken

Wouldn't installing from USB still complain about insufficient free space?

I wonder if the imagex /apply trick will work for upgrade?

So far I've only used that method for clean install.

I'm not trying to do this on my primary machine, I'm trying to do it on a netbook. Sorry for the confusion.

Right now I have a little less than 3GB. Windows 7 says I need 13GB to perform an upgrade installation. Windows alone leaves me with only 7GB of space, thus my need to use an external drive for temporary storage during the install.

I don't really think that installing from USB would make a difference, as I think it still will try to use the hard drive to store my settings and programs while it upgrades. Correct me if I'm wrong...

What exactly is the "imagex /apply" trick? And what exactly does it do?

with imagex you can install windows without writing to DVD or extracting the ISO file. But like I say, I have never tried this method for upgrade.. only clean install.

BTW there is a tutorial for that in the tutorials section.

Install Windows 7 FAST without a DVD or USB device

I'll take a look at it, but it doesn't sound like this would fix my problem. My problem is that Windows essentially backs up and restores files/settings/programs during an upgrade installation, and my netbook's hard drive doesn't have room for it to do that.