Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Reclaim Free Space After Installing Windows 7 SP1

 

After installing SP 1 in Windows 7 we will find that we have considerable less space in C drive.

This is because at the time of installation the system restore creates a restore point

and Windows 7 creates a backup of system files in case you want to uninstall the SP1 in case of any problem.

Now if your system is up and running after few days of installation of SP 1 then you may probably think of removing these backup files.

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If you have no problem with extra space then let them be there. But if you want a sleek system without extra baggage then you can do the following:

1. Open the terminal(command prompt) as administrator. (Under subheading Accessories you will find command prompt. right click on it and select ‘Run as administrator)

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2. Copy paste the following command

dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

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3.  Press enter and wait for some time. You will find that free space is C drive has increased.

 

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You can see I gained almost 2 GB of free space.

The flip side is now you cannot uninstall SP1. So think twice and then decide.