tomda - 9:54 am on Jul 29, 2008 (gmt 0)

Bought a new laptop (Toshiba) with Vista 32bit SP 1.

Shrink C:// (actually 110 Gb with Vista approx. 15 Gb) and Windows can only free 30 Gb of space.

Step A/ Did the basic, DiskCleanup and Defragmentation.
Tried again - same result

Step B/ Download PerfectDisk 8, did a Defragmentation (with offline files - pages files, - after boot)
Gain 10 Gb but still not enough.

Step C/ Did a factory restore, then Defragmentation with PerfectDisk and can free 43 Gb of space.

***************
I have read a lot of docs about this issue and only two others solutions came out

A/ Because whatever you do, MFT files will always be in the middle of the volume, a method would be to do several restore/shrink. E.g. Shrink C and create new partition (50%), do factory restore in C and shring it again to free space, and again up to the maximum limit

B/ Force to delete user files before defragment/shrink - e.g. DiskCleanup Wizard, remove hibernation file and restore points, disable System Restore, disable the pagefile, disable the kernel memory dump, reboot machine and delete your c:\pagefile.sys file. I want to try this one but it is a bit risky, isn't it

Any of you this the same issue and a solution ?

Thank you