[david_copperfield]

Hi, guys. If I am going to reinstall my OS, do I need to reclaim zeroed space from Virtual PC before performing installation?

[PubGuy]

The reclaim zero space on VPC doesn't work as good as it should. In order for it to work, you've got to defrag the VPC image, then install and run a program to zero out all free clusters, then try to reclaim space.

Personally, I don't think its worth the time and effot. If you're OK with the amount of space the virtual drive takes up now, then don't bother, just reinstall.

Conversely, if you want to start from scratch, you can always create a new virtual drive and do a fresh install into that image. FYI - even on a fresh install, Windows will leave you with a pretty fragmented drive and you will still want to run a defrag when your install and updates are all complete.

[david_copperfield]

I C. Thanx..!!!

[Maflynn]

The problem with VPC is by default its set to auto grow the disk image, if your not careful it just keeps grabbing disk space.
I'm not on my mac right now, so I'm unsure where the setting is but I found the reclaim zeroed space to work once I switched that off. I did have to defrag, and run the process a couple of times but I was able to shrink it down to a manable size.

Mike

[david_copperfield]

Thanks. To claim space back, I need to run Precompact on Virtual PC, then turn it off and run VIrtual Disk Asistant. It takes ages for the process to finish.