Reclaim your precious disk space after installing Windows Vista SP1

After you've installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 you might have noticed that the free space on the installation drive has reduced significantly. Where's the free space gone? Well the answer to this question is that the RTM files (your old system files) were backed up during installation of SP1 so that the system can be rolled back to prior state if the user decides to un-install the SP1.
If you have no plans to un-install the SP1 then you can reclaim the space by removing the backed up files. To get back your free space you need to run 'Vsp1cln.exe' (without quotes).

Here's how you can do that:

• Press [Windows Logo] key + R on your keyboard or click 'Run' on the Start menu.

• Now type Vsp1cln.exe in the run dialog box & click OK.


• Enter the Administrator credentials & click Continue on UAC prompt.


• In the Command Prompt window, press 'Y' on the keyboard and press Enter/Return key.

• Windows will now cleanup the disk.

Optional switches you may use with Vsp1cln.exe(Without Quotes):

• "/? or /h"- Displays this list of Vsp1cln.exe commands.


• "/o:[Offline_Windows_directory_path]"- Indicates that the archived RTM files that need to be removed are in an offline image.


• "/quiet"- Runs in quiet mode. No console output is provided. If this option is not used, you will be prompted with a confirmation message.


• "/verbose"- Provides additional diagnostics output.

I reclaimed approx. 1 G.B. of disk space after running the clean up tool.

WARNING- You cannot un-install/remove Windows Vista Service Pack 1 after running this tool.

Author- Rajbir Singh

Licensed Under- Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License

Some of the information in this post is obtained from Microsoft's Knowledge Base by the author.