Win7 System Reserved Partition Full

[Johan45]

Win 7 System Reserved Partition full
I have a couple SSD's , One has a Dual boot Win7 x64 pro on both partitions and the second I recently installed Vista 32. It was installed with the other drive disconnected. At some point I reconnected the dual boot drive and when in vista. It said that my E; drive was full and sure enough I formatted the second partition and it won't let me install Win7 again. It's sayin that the reserve is full and can't proceed.
Went back into Vista and these 2 folders appear in the reserve. boot and the one with all the usage is $WINDOWS.~LS I googled that folder with no real results.
Does anyone know if I could just delete it or is there a better way to resolve this so I can get Win7 installed on the second partition again??
Thanks

 

[pigulici]

Format the partition with a linux live(like gparted live)...

 

[Johan45]

Thanks for the reply pigulici
Won't that mess up my initial Win7 install?

 

[pigulici]

If are not any boot files on that partition, it will be ok, but allways it is good to backup your important files on separate device/hdd/ssd when you "play" with partitions...

 

[Johan45]

Isn't that what the system reserved partition is ? Or is it just a backup incase the windows boot files get corrupt?

 

[pigulici]

I deleted that partion, in fact I never let the Windows to make partitions, I do it manually, and yes even with that partition, some file are put on windows partition...

 

[Johan45]

Ya that's the general consensus so far is to do all the active partitions first then install. I've never been to good with the software end of things. This drive is going into a different box soon so I will mess with that partition a bit and see if I can just delete that folder from anothe SSD. I'm pretty sure that it's something Vista wrote to it when the 2 drives were connected to the Board.

 

[Proutmax]

Hello, I used a lot the web for my problems and never really participate myself.

But this time maybe I can help.
If I understand correctly, the reserved partition at the beginning of the first hard drive with the 2 - 7 systems (now 1 only), is reported to be full.
If this is it, here is a thing that might work, as it had for me, minus the fact that I had only one system, and the problem I was facing is that when less than 50 Mo free space (on this 100 Mo reserved partition as default) is available, Windows backup refuse to work.

There you go.

- be sure to have the thing that you can install 7 from. DVD, or in my case a USB drive. Bootable of course.
- make sure you have created an repair dvd thing from 7 (in system config panel something), bootable with utilities.

Then

- start as if you wanted to install 7
- when you can choose location on the hard drive, delete (not format) the reserved partition (if I understood, 100 Mo at the beginning of the disk)
- exit install reboot with utilities DVD
- go in "I have a problem to boot" or whatever it is called
- then it will reconstruct it, clean as new, with more free space inside (I went from 30 Mo to 70 Mo and backup could work again)
- then you can try what you wanted to do

Maybe I am completely wrong and misunderstood the problem, I try to stay away from multiboot, in fact everything not simple...
I no more can have PC problem it drives me mad.

Oh and maybe disconnect vista drive while all this.
But I don't know if after, it can work again ?
Depends from where the files to boot are.
Google is here.

But I think MS was aware of this space problem with the small reserved partition, because since 8, default size for it is now 500 Mo.

Hope it helps.

 

[Johan45]

Thanks Proutmax, that's basically the problem in a nutshell. I have also read of ways to add to the size of the partition. But this one sounds like it would work.. Like pigulici says and through discussions with others from now on I will not allow Win7 to create the System partition since it's not necessary for windows to boot if it's installed without it. After is a bit of a different story and can't cause me problems if it's just not there.

 

[Johan45]

Just an update, I deleted the $WINDOWS.~LS folder, gained 70MB back and Windows still works. Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

[pigulici]

After I run CCleaner(from piriform) I delete all files from "C:\windows\softwaredistribution\download", these are cache files of windows updates(after install the updates it is safe to delete all from this folder)...

 

[Johan45]

Thanks, wouldn't hurt to free up a bit more space on the SSD. I also use CCleaner, have for years.