+ 85GBs on my VHD file... Can't Shrink it

OK, here it is... this is from within Win XP Mode

There's another DM from Win 7 without the Attached VHD and the next one with the Attached VHD and also from Win 7 DM

I also tried the OrbStart/All Programs/WindowsVirtualPC/Settings and merging the vhd but I kept getting the following error. Tried disabling the Read-Only attribute but to now avail, it tells me Access Denied. I even tried in Safe Mode to no avail. Getting to its properties and trying to change the security does nothing for me.

Well, I seemed to have botched something, even though, I would not know what I did... all I know is I copied the vhd 85GB file from my SSD to my HDD Data Drive. After that I had to delete the vhd file in my SSD because it literally did not stop with the pop ups of not enough space.

So I tried to go to the setting and make XP Mode see the new Data Drive for the vhd file but all of a sudden, the vhd file imploded from 85GBs to barely 400 KBs in size

So, long story short, tomorrow I will install Windows 7 from scratch and another copy of Win XP Mode... it will probably take all day with everything else I have to install but I gotta ask the question

Now that I will make a fresh install of the virtual XP, what can I do to not let the vhd file grow that big?

Kari said:

Miles, you should not try to edit XP Mode settings to use the new (copied) vhd. Instead you should create a new virtual machine and add it as existing vhd, as told in my previous post.

Well, making Virtual XPs is not really what I do on a daily basis so I did not know what exactly I was doing. The last time I did this was about a year or two... In the end it does not matter because it is already botched, over and done with. :)

Well, not really, perhaps God is not out to fully get me because I have found a Clone Disk I did back when I first did this build (It has Firefox 15 and we are already on 29 ) and I can see that this vhd file is already at 17 GBs (17,648,086 KBs to be exact)

Now, being said this, I am quiet comfortable with that size and I don't care to maximize it and bring it down even more, what I do care and would love to know is... HOW DO I STOP IT FROM GROWING FROM NOW ON??

This drive is very old, to the point that writing to it is extremely slow. I want to install a few more things and clone it to the SSD so I can put it back to pasture again but I don't want to do that until I learn how to block the vhd file from growing exponentially.

whs said:

I installed all my virtual systems (5xLinux and Windows 8.1) on an external drive. I use VMware Player. Reason is also lack of space on the SSD where the OS is installed.

I wonder whether that is also possible with this XP mode which I never touched because I have no XP. On the external a few bytes more would no bother.

While I was making (or attempting) to make another virtual XP mode, I noticed that it does let you choose a different drive if you want but, and here's the kicker... what if when you are done (say on a 1TB drive) it wants to make its size 500 GBs? my issue is the fact that it does not allow or gives the option (at least not one I can see) to set or define a size and hold it there.