[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Windows Vista SP2: Readers Report Big Increases in Free Disk Space here

[PTFox29]

Not only that I did not get more free space on the disc, but my computer needed recovery after I tried to download SP2. Total mess! I lost 1 hour to get it to work and that is a good machine only 1 year old. Now I have again SP2 hanging on the downloads but sorry I am going to wait until they fix at least some of the problems.

[mjolson]

its called temporary files and crap microsoft left there last time you installed windows.

[DTNick]

@PTFox: Eek, that's not good. By hanging on the downloads, do you mean that SP2 isn't downloading for you? Or something else?

--Nick

[PTFox29]

No, it successfuly downloaded and when I restarted the PC it was not loadind Vista and asked to start recovery ( did I have another option?) And after all now I have SP2 hanging there as a new download?! What is going on? I remember with nostalgy XP when MS with pleasure send me the disc with SP2 and it loaded perfectly. Is that Vista SP2 kind of bail out from MS like all crapy bail outs?

[imaPCnotaMac]

i gained about 10 Gb immediatly after installing SP2, and another 2Gb after running compcln.exe
Seems to have worked!

[daniel142005]

I never had any luck with Vista SP2, the official or (especially) the beta release. Actually it pissed me so bad that I wiped Vista and just ran with Windows 7... Now I don't think I can go back.

[bigpoppa75]

Before you installed Vista SP2 did you turn off your antivirus program?

[daniel142005]

Don't have one, so that couldn't be the problem, I didn't really bother trying to find out the "why" and just went with Windows 7.

[VSDude]

Installed SP2 on my Vista Home Premium 64-bit Dell. Had to run a program that prepares the computer for updates first though. I followed instructions from MS' KB and then installed SP2 without issue.

[gorufu]

My local drive volumes (Belarc Advisor)
Vista Home Premium SP 1:
320.7 usable gb/247.53 gb free.
Immediately after installing Vista SP2:
320.7 usable gb/289.55gb.
I did nothing except download/install SP2.
I'm one happy Microsoft Vista customer!

[jayteealpha001]

I haven't noticed any hard disk benefits but my 5.1 sound card is now functioning at start-up. Previously I had to mess about with settings every time I booted up my machine.

[wazing]

I noticed about 18% INCREASED of space on my HD . . . .very interesting that it appeared afterward. . .

[GuestJim]

I also had to run that program to prepare my computer for an update before SP2 installed. I also gained about 30GB and it appears to have come from the wiping of restore points. I was having trouble with install SP2 (it appears I was, in part, just not patient enough) and I tried doing a restore point after one of the times I forced the installer to stop and only found the most recent, made by the installer. I'll bet that's where all of the free disk space is coming from and why it varies from person to person, as the number of restore points depends on the hard drive size.
One odd thing is that the restore points go back to the first time I tried installing SP2, none before, but every one after, including subsequent attempts to install.

[OldOnliner]

VSDude said:

Installed SP2 on my Vista Home Premium 64-bit Dell. Had to run a program that prepares the computer for updates first though. I followed instructions from MS' KB and then installed SP2 without issue.

Do you have a reference # for the MS KB article you followed?

[Klaatu]

Installed on Lenovo
ThinkPad with Vista Home Premium SP1 and lost On screen display message
generator (TPOSDSVC.exe), High Def Audio Device driver and ThinkVantage
System Update. May have lost more functionality but uninstalled SP2
before finding out. Too bad since laptop SEEMED to run faster.

[madhutmenon]

My windows update mentioned that the SP2 is now ready to be installed and I went ahead with the installation on my Lenovo Laptop which came preloaded with 32 bit Vista Business SP1. After the stage 2 of the Installation the "Shutting down" Message came up which stayed on there for ever. I was doing this installation late in the night so left it as it is thinking it is taking a little longer. I came back in the morning to see the same screen with no hard disk activity. I had to hard boot the system and then The stage 3 of the installation completed successfully. Again after this I tried to shut down my system it started going into an Infinite loop at the "Shutting down" screen.

I started trying around some options. I had another administrator login differnet from the one which I installed SP2. I hardly use it. Now when i logged into the system afresh after rebooting using that different login the shut down was successfull. So I complelety uninstalled SP2. The original login through which the SP2 installation happened still had the Shutdown issue. Now I reinstalled Sp2 again through windows update but through the other login which was working fine. NO Hope. Same issue came into the other admin login id too. So I uninstalled Sp2 totally. Now both my admin login Ids are messed up, I am left with a Lenovo laptop which cannot shutdown or hibernate. The system hangs when trying to do both.

The funny thing is that sp2 was downloaded through the option that comes up in my Windows update screen. It still appears in my windows update screen. But I am not trying anything more. Again I have another HP laptop where it says it is ready to be installed through Windows Update. I am not trying that because after SP1 installation the Sound driver messed up on that laptop and I have to do some work to get the sound after each reboot.

Thank You Microsoft for messing up with my decently running system and trying out another untested version of your software on the users.

If anybody had similar issues and had ways of getting out of it. It will be of great help.

[DaleM69]

I got 24 gig of extra space, after SP2 install

[rem736]

i don't think there's anything earth shattering here. with my first vista laptop a year back, i noticed that after installing all the updates, the temp folder in local settings was a whopping 20 GB. microsoft apparently forgot to limit the amount that the temp folder would hold. i obviously deleted the contents and regained the space. in sp2, ms just implemented a clean-up procedure after the installation.

[chevrolet1994]

Day 2 and still no problems!

Why didn't Micro$oft think of deleting restore points and other crap earlier?

That would have made the "Windows Vista
Experience" a little less frustrating!