virtualbox.org

I tried to remove all known junks from the window dir e.g. $NTUninstall..., temp files, etc and setting no pagefile. But I still got a 4GB VDI file. Is it possible to go down further? I'm sure there are a lot of unneeded files in window dir but not sure which one to remove. Does anyone ever achieved a smaller size?

My basic SP2 install is 1.7GB. That's a working image including pagefile of default size for a 512MB VM. I've never installed SP3 on any PC.

Incidentally, there are loads of websites dedicated to trimming the FAT from Windows: there would be a better place to look than here, since the question really has nothing to do with VirtualBox.

Remove service pack backup files, patches backup folders, de-install items from control panel.

As noted above, this isn't a VB question. The only relation here is that XP is run in VB and the OS is stored on a VDI. The rest is pointless here. There is one thing that's worth mentioning though. Don't think that if you remove files from the VDI, that the file shrinks in size as well. It will only grow until it reaches it's max size.

Sasquatch wrote:Don't think that if you remove files from the VDI, that the file shrinks in size as well. It will only grow until it reaches it's max size.

In relation to clonevdi it does shrink.

vbox4me2 wrote:

Sasquatch wrote:Don't think that if you remove files from the VDI, that the file shrinks in size as well. It will only grow until it reaches it's max size.

In relation to clonevdi it does shrink.

But that requires user intervention. By default, it doesn't get smaller. Your reply isn't only true for CloneVDI, but also for zero-free with VBoxManage clonehd. Which is also user intervention and not done automatically to shrink the VDI.

Sasquatch wrote:But that requires user intervention.

Duh

Inactivate "system restore point", inactive "waste basket", inactivate Swap file, inactivate hibernate file. Then you should get closer to 1GB.