Vista SP1 Cleanup tool

For those of you that are running Vista, but haven't deployed SP1 yet: do it!
Sure, the installation will take you 2 hours, not including the download, but the performance gain is considerable.

If you still have to install SP1, make sure you comply to the prerequisites before continuing with the installation of SP1. For laptops: make sure the AC power is plugged-in and don't remove it during the installation of SP1. If the laptop can't restart successfully during the No boot window you are f***ed ... During this fase, the critical drivers and components are updated.
For more information, check this guide: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Deployment Guide

OK, now that your SP1 is installed, the PC perfoms a lot better, but as you noticed, your hard disk has less free space available.

Now with the Vista SP1 cleanup tool you can reclaim about 2 GB. The VSP1CLN.exe tool will remove Vista RTM files that have been superseded by SP1 files. And it will also remove backups, which means that uninstalling the SP1 is no longer an option! (not that you will want to do that)

Where can I download this tool? You can't, if you have SP1 installed, you have the cleanup tool as well ... It is located in the %windir%\system32 folder so you can directly run it in a command screen:


The uninstallation can take some time. With me about 10 - 15 minutes, but afterwards no further action is required:


Enjoy!