Vista Upgrade

mealmond

Hi

After three months of waiting I ecieved my Vista Upgrade yesterday.

I decided to put it on my Acer Travelmate 2490.

I recieved the Vista disc and a disc with Acer driver upgrades as well. Although not clear what to do I got there in the end, so I thought.

All appeared well, I had checked my machine was compatable and bar a couple of small issues all appeared ok.

I ran the Acer disc which removed some programs and the tried to install Vista.

All appeared well until near the end where it declared there was a problem and it put the machine back to XP.

I know the RAM is ok as I upgraded that.

On checking things again it says there is not enough space on the hard drive.

It recommmends 40gb on each drive, very difficult as there is only 25gb on each drive and of course some of that is used by programs.

My D drive has only 2.5gb free but yet I cannot see many programs on that drive, bar what I think are three back up files which I cannot delete. I have now done a back up to disc and would like to remove these file but on trying it tells me they are to big for the recycle bin and then the file name is to big to delete. As yet I have found no way of deleting these files.

From what I can see therefore Vista is not going to run, and I am annoyed if not as that is the prime reason I bought the laptop, for the free upgrade. Why advertise it as Vista compatable and then not allow the upgrade.

My c drive has only 10.5 gb free.

Is there something I am missing here?

I wanted to do a clean install but I did not want to loose my files, so the install I did change all my details to be compatable, thus keeping my details.

Is there any way to do a clean install of Vista but put my files on a seperate hard drive and put them back on after the upgrade, if so how to I go about this as I do not want loose my programs and files.


Thanks if anybody has any tips



Martin

pistonbroke

Vista needs at least 4GB of free space, so check the D drive, change the folder settings in Windows Explorer > Tools > folder options > View and change it so you can see hidden files and folders. Then you should be able to see what is eating 22GB of space, seems a lot though.

mealmond

Hi

I have changed the settings as mentioned but to be honest I don't know what to look for.

All my folders extra are shown, on the D drive it on shows 8 yellow folders, 3 of which I think are back ups that the system will not allow me to delete, the others are only small files.

Is there anywhere I else I should be looking to see what is taking up so much space?

I have felt for a while, it is as though there is a program/file I cannot see that is making the drive full.

Is thee anything else I can do to look in boh drivs to see why they are nearly full.

At the moment the only way I know is open up My Computer and right click on the drives to get properties and then read the pie chart.

I have run system checks, virus checks etc but cannot find anything.



Thanks


Martin

CHR15

You could try Treesize

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

This will tell you which folders are taking up the most amount of space.


If you have your program disks though, you could uninstall everything from XP
Then upgrade to Vista, then reinstall your programs.

mealmond

Hi

Thanks CHR15, the program you mentioned is very good.

According to that, I have 17 GB used on C drive, on my computer it is showing 16.8 GB used, so that is about right. On the D drive, this may be the problem. According to the Treesize program thee is only 3GB used, but according to My Computer, there is 23.5 GB used, so I appear to have lost 20 GB somewhere.

How can the readings be different, I have run various virus checks etc and everything is fine.



Thanks so far


Martin

CHR15

Sounds like some hidden protected files sitting on

More than likely the restore files for your laptop.

If it were me!!!!........

I would delete the whole partition (D: drive) and reformat.
The downside is that you would not the the restore facility to return it to the way it was when you bought it.

Make sure you move the 3gb of files across first if you need them afterwords.

Thinking aloud..... this may be possible by right clicking on My Computer => Manage => Disk Management

Right click over and delete it, then prepare it and format it (as ntfs).

This will leave you with a completely bare drive.


If there are issues over the protected status, it may be necessary to boot into Safe Mode or use a third party disk partitioning tool.




EDIT:

Try Treesize Pro, this version goes into protected system folders too

http://www.jam-software.de/customers/downloadTrial.php?article_no=101&language=EN

mealmond

Thanks everyone for the advice.

I have tried to format the drive after moving any required files but have not been able to do it.

I have tried in normal mode and in safe mode but I cannot do it.

I cannot parition drives etc let alone format it.

I have decided to leave alone for now.

I would have liked to get Vista working but I don't want to damage anything.

It is annoying to find that my computer is listed as having x amount of drive space to find a large portion is taken for a back up but at the same time advised to back up to disc, which I did.

I suppose as long as it's all working ok then I should be happy.

Thanks for all the help though.



Martin