Cleanse your post-SP1 Vista installation

« Test all aspects of your PCs performance with PC Wizard | Main | Use your IT knowledge to make money through LogMeInRescue »

Cleanse your post-SP1 Vista installation

March 21, 2008 in Software | Permalink

Screenshot Install Vista Service Pack 1 and you'd expect the update tool to either overwrite the old files or install the new updates and delete the old, saving you space on your drive. It does neither. It leaves all the old pre-SP1 files on your system, just in case you want to go back and remove SP1. However, if you've been using SP1 on your system for a few days, and your system is running without issues, then you could safely remove these old files.

Vista SP1 ships with it's own tool that enables you to do this, but you can't do it manually, you have to go to the command line and run 'vsp1cln.exe' which will spend a couple of minutes analysing and removing the old unnecessary system files. You won't be able to uninstall SP1 after performing this clean-up task though.