Recover hdd space by removing files left after installing Vista SP1

Posted on Aug 03, 2008

If you have Windows Vista SP1 installed on your PC, you can recover a huge amt. of your HDD space by removing some not so useful files. And for that purpose I’m going to tell you how you can regain about 1.5 gb of your HDD space if you are using 64-bit version of Vista or about 800mb if you are using 32-bit ver. of Vista.

But before proceeding you would want to know from where we will get this extra space. The answer is when you install Service Pack 1 it updates the windows but does not delete the original files which are updated. The only benefit of keeping these files is that if due to any reason you want to uninstall the Service Pack, Windows will restore these original files. But I personally don’t see any benefit of having the ability of going back i.e to uninstall SP1.

So if you think that your system is more stable, compatible and working good after installing SP1 and you would never need to uninstall the Service Pack then just follow the road ahead at the end of which you will get some extra space in your HDD.

Here is how to do this>>>>

1. First of all take note of your current free space on your system drive by checking it’s properties.

2. Click on Start button, type VSP1CLN in the search box and you will get an executable file vsp1cln.exe. This vsp1cln.exe is the SP1 Files Removal Tool which automatically gets installed when you install service pack.

3. Right-click on vsp1cln.exe and click Run as administrator. A command prompt window will open. Here windows will ask you whether you would like to continue or not. Of Course we wanna continue.

4. To continue you’ll have to press Y(for yes). When you do that the removal process will start.

5. The whole process took approx 10 min's. on my PC coz I’ve the 64 bit ver. installed. If you are using 32 bit Vista it should take about 5 min's or less becoz in that case it deletes lesser files as compared to the x64 ver. When the Clean up process completes you will get a message saying “Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Disk Clean up completed”

6. Now to see how much space you actually recovered check free space on your system drive like you did in the first step.

Compare the free space before and after and you’ll see the difference.