Windows 7 Post-Installation Space Issue

[pspmun]

I just finished installing a Windows 7 Pro upgrade from Vista. I now have almost no room left on my hard drive, which used to have about 100+ GBs free. What can I safely delete?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Welcome to SF!

See this tutorial: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/76383-disk-cleanup-extended.html

 

[pspmun]

Thanks. Glad to be aboard.

I followed what you suggested and ran the disk cleanup, but it made no change to my space issue on my HD. Any other suggestions?

 

[pspmun]

Also, this was an upgrade. Can I delete the copy of vista without killing my computer? I am guessing that would free up a large amount of space.

 

[Jonathan_King]

I don't know where you could delete Vista, because it is not installed. If you see a way, let me know, and I'll take a look.

Check with Windirstat to see where your space is going.

Also check out this link and see if maybe shadow copies are the issue here: http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/80956-why-so-many-created-shadow-copies-time.html

 

[OldBloke]

It seems you did an "in place upgrade" install, keeping a lot of stuff from Vista, instead of doing a clean install.

You could try to clean it up, for example if it kept some files in C:\Windows.old. You can delete a lot of what's in there and only keep any personal documents, pictures, etc.

If it was mine, I would first save any valuable files onto another disk or DVD and then do a clean install as described here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

Doing it that way, you will need to reinstall all your programs in the new OS, but you won't be wasting space with old files from Vista, which are difficult to find, or to know what can be safely deleted. Also a clean install is more reliable than an "in place upgrade" which is what I guess you have done.