[FreeFool]

Hello,

I am looking for some help and I will try to explain my problem briefly.

My desktop PC had Vista pre-installed, and I dont have much on the machine except for photos, music, movies and few documents. Now I transferred all this media to a portable drive for safe keeping. The issue is for some reason my hard drive still shows 75 gigs of 150 as being free. There is no real reason why so much space is being used. In my limited knowledge, I would only expect up to around 20 gigs to be used up as i dont have any major big programs installed. I have run defrag, CCleaner and other similar products to try to increase disk space with limited success.

Anyway, I thought that if I upgraded to Windows 8 it would essentially install and overwrite everything and i would have a clean and tidy PC. I installed Windows 8 with no problem (to my surprise) via the upgrade assistant and the whole process to just over an hour. I did choose the option to keep nothing from Vista, in an attempt to recover hard disk space. Once installed, it appears to run well, I played a couple of Xbox games (got some achievements :o) ), checked my email, surfed the net etc. Now though, the hard disk shows 48 gigs free of 150!! I am not happy with this and I would like to format the hard drive and start from scratch.

The issue is that I did not save the ISO file, so I cant reinstall at this moment in time but I am prepared to go and buy a physical retail disk version on Windows 8 - I just want my hard disk space back, I dont mind paying £50 to get it.

The issue is I have never done anything like this before (I have always bought a PC with the OS installed). Can anyone provide some guidance on how i can uninstall Windows 8, format my drive, and re-install Windows 8 from the disk which i would assume would have to be run from dos?

Any help or pointers will be gratefully received!! Thank you.

[HeyCori]

If you bought Windows 8 from Microsoft's online store then you should be able to re-download the ISO.

You should also check your hard drive for errors.

Check your hard disk for errors

[Bearach]

You could always use disk clean-up to remove Windows uninstall information. Despite you choosing to not save anything, Windows 8, still backs up your previous installation. That would explain some of you issue.

To run disk clean-up in Windows 8:

On Computer (in Explorer) left click upon the desired drive (This case will be Local Disk C:) and a contextual tab will appear at the top. It should be a light green in colour and called "Manage". Click on "Manage" and it should show "Clean-up" as one of the options. Click upon "Clean-up". Now click upon "Clean System Files" and say "Yes" to the User Account Control prompt. Once the application has finished calculating you should have the option to remove uninstall files. Make sure that is ticked.

Also it may be a good idea to clear your "System Restore" which is also easily done from there. Click upon the tab "More Options" and you'll see a couple of options. The option we need is "System Restore and Shadow Copies". Click the "Clean up..." button and this will clear to the "recent" point.

See how much space you have now, also, do as Figure 8 Dash has suggested and check your hard disk for errors.

You can also get to the Windows 8 installer here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=262204 which also has an option to make an ISO during it's setup.

To get the ISO for burning to disk:

Run the setup and input your serial number to continue. Continue fully till you get to "Downloading Windows 8" - Wait for it to download. Once the downloader has checked the download for errors, and getting files ready has completed, select "Install by creating media", then select ISO file. Wait for the ISO to be created and then burn to disk.

[WasteSomeTime]

Just put the windows 8 disk and do a clean install.
Sent from my SGH-i677 using Board Express

[Laura Knotek]

Bearach is correct. If you upgraded from a previous version of Windows, the files from the previous version are stored in a folder called Windows.old.

How to remove the Windows.old folder - Microsoft Windows

[Isror]

I never upgrade, just back-up what I need to keep (which is done already on my home server) and clean install. Format the install drive, create a new partition and its off to the races.

[FreeFool]

Hi all,
Thanks for the responses.
I can confirm that the refresh and reset option did solve the issue, deleted everything and left me with Windows 8 and 90% free hard disk space and no other programs installed.