On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 5:52 PM, Stephanos <[email protected]> wrote:
> [...]
> When Windows is running it reports that I only have 8.97 MB of HDD
> space left. I really need to add space to the virtual machine and I
> thought it did this automatically.
>
I suspect you can free 30% ~ 50% or more of the space that Windows XP is
using.
The number one offender is usually the hibernation file, hibernation when
running in a virtual machine is arguably unnecessary and can be disabled
from the hibernate tab on the power options panel.
A second offender is the swap file, depending on how well you tuned your XP
(ie turn off unnecessary services, programs launched at login) and how much
memory you can allocate to the VM, you can likely make the swap
significantly smaller or even disable entirely.
All the files under: c:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download can be
permanently deleted by hold the shift key in explorer when selecting delete
with a right click. If you have pending updates, only select the older
files and directories, once updates are installed, their download files can
safely be deleted.
If you turn off 'Do not show hidden files and folders' in explorer and
check under c:\Windows you'll see many directories named in this format:
$NtUninstallKB*$. These are Microsoft patch uninstall directories, older
directories can safely be deleted, all can be deleted if you are satisfied
that it is unlikely you'll need to uninstall specific Microsoft patches.
The only question to ask is, will I need to uninstall a given patch? If
the answer is no, then delete its uninstall directory.
Once you have deleted the low hanging fruit, I suspect at this point you'll
have significant free space, compact your virtual drive as follows:
- Run Crap Cleaner or similar disk clean up utility
- Run a good defragger, I use Defraggler, I am sure there are others
- Run sdelete from Microsoft's SysInternals: sdelete -c c:\ to zero free
space
- Shutdown the VM
- From the host command line: vboxmanage modifyhd path-of-the-vm-vdi
--compact
- Start your VM
You should now have space to install your patches, do the above on some
regular basis.
Brett
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