Factory Image

[FLBroker]

When doing a files transfer from my old computer to my new one I received a message that I had no more space on Factory Image - Drive D.  Sure enough I checked drive D and it's maxed out even though there are only two files there - System Restore and Recovery. How did this happen and how can I restore it?

My old comuter has the same drive and files but the drive not even close to being maxed out.

Thanks

[TheOldMan]

The Drive D: is the recovery parition and you should not put anything additional on there.  The parition is made with little extra room as HP does not want you to mess with the recovery partition in fear the recovery process would be destroyed.  Make a folder on C: for your extra data from the old computer.  There should be plenty of room and the C: drive.

[c0rnel]

You can fix this 3 ways.

1) You can go to start, computer , rightclick on the full drive D: or E: whatever's called and click Explore and see if there's a backup yellow folder called pc or your pc's usernames. If you do see it delete that yellow folder, if not leave everything else there. 

NOTE: Don't delete any other files or recovery purple folders. You also don't have access to view them they're mean for recovery purposes only.

2) Method 2 to fix this (which i don't recommend if you have a lot of stuff on the pc) is to run Recovery on the pc using the Recovery discs but I highly recommend removing drive D: first before running the discs top ensure issue will be resolved.

NOTE: A regular recovery from the recovery drive won't fix itself in the D: drive. So don't wipe your C: thinking that a recovery from F11 or F10 will fix it cause it won't.

3) In method 3 you can simply get rid of the annoying popup message box by going into your registry as shown in the link below and create the entry so that the pc won't check for low disk spaces and warn you every 5 minutes about it.

I recommend this method if method 1 above didn't help. This way you don't have to run a Recovery and even the drive will always show as almost full it's OK because no further files or folders can be added to it which is good and doing this method will eliminate that annyoing popup box.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windowsvista/ht/dislowdisk.htm

NOTE: The link above also works for XP not just for Vista.

Hope this helps, and sorry if it was long.

Message Edited by c0rnel on 03-11-2009 05:38 PM

[FLBroker]

Thank you for taking the time to reply with your suggestions.

One more question.  Can I run System Restore by choosing a restore point just before the original attempt at files transfer?  Will this restore the D drive to it's orginal settings?

Thanks again

[CAJane]

I am running the 64 bit version of Vista and I am unable to eliminate the low disk space checks using the regedit.  How should this be modified to accomodate the 64 bit (vs 32 bit)????

[Vaika]

Unfortunately system restore won't work in this situation.  System Restore doesn't alter any user-created files, it only rolls back driver/registry/program settings other system files.