Questions. Installing and Upgrading Vista Discuss Questions. in the Windows Vista forums; Go here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...r/default.mspx and download and run the upgrade advisor. It will let you know whether or not your PC can run Vista....

[felix8406]

Go here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...r/default.mspx and download and run the upgrade advisor. It will let you know whether or not your PC can run Vista.

[Snuffy]

Not sure what only shows 1 HD.. which program did you use...?
If you used Belarc Advisor and it says 1 HD and only 1 Local Drive then all you have is 30 GB... You really should buy a new bigger HD.. 30 GB simply is not BIG ENOUGH...

[felix8406]

I still don't think that the HD has a 30GB capacity, it is possible, but I doubt it. From what I gathered so far, his HD is partitioned. One of those partitions has about 3GB of free space. There's a possibility that Vista cannot upgrade the current OS, so it's selecting the second partition for a clean install, however, that second partition is too small and only has 3GB of free space. There's the possibility that the partition showing 3GB of free space is in fact Dell's recovery partition, which should be left as it is.

If that is the case, there are tow choices that I can think of: purchase and additional hard drive and use it to install Vista as dual boot, or back up the C-drive and do a clean install of Vista. Either, one thing to keep in mind is that Vista is still a limited evaluation copy, so upgrading Win XP is not the best option.

[Snuffy]

Your judgment sounds reasonable to me, and I wonder why the 2nd (Partition) if it is hidden 30GB is so FULL... or if he has only 30GB and 3Gb left, then where is the RESTORE partition and why is it so FULL.. It really would be nice if a Tech could get hands on this to check..
and also he really should get the Vista advisor and test to see if he want to upgrade if all is capable of Vista. MS has it on there site it is FREE and you can google "Vistaupgradeadvisor".

[felix8406]

You are correct Snuffy, unless the HD is full of games or movie files, that's a lot of data, if his drive is in fact a 30GB capacity. Another thing that come to mind is whether or not Danteunknown will have enough experience to go alone on installing Vista. There are too many risks involved, especially if there's important data that must be saved. Although we can provide some advice on how to proceed, many things can go wrong, and without much experience it can become a big issue.