Cleanup hard disk in Windows Vista after installing SP2

After installing Vista SP2, hard disk’s used space increases by more than 1 GB. This is due to the fact that SP2 installation backs up the old SP1 and RTM files first and then installs SP2. Also SP2 installation copies files to your hard disk needed to uninstall SP2 later. In most cases, most of the user would not want to go back to SP1 and so we can safely remove all these piles of files.

NOTE : This process will remove the ability of uninstalling SP1 and SP2. Do not follow the instructions unless you have plans to uninstall SP2 later.

  1. You need administrator level access for this procedure to work.
  2. Open an elevated command prompt. See this article to know how : Open elevated command prompt in Windows Vista.
  3. In the command prompt window, type compcln.exe and press Enter.

    Clean Vista SP2 left over files

  4. Type Y to continue when asked Would you like to continue? (Y/N). Typing N would cancel the cleaning.
  5. The cleaning process would be finished in a few minutes. After it is done, you would see Windows Component Clean Completed message.
  6. Close the command prompt.

On average, you can recover about 1 GB of disk space using this method.