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For those that may need help with large amounts of missing disk space on vista I may have the answer. I ran into this problem (50gb missing) and it took a few hours to fix. The problem was actually an offline folders problem. Vista sucks with the offline file syncs in that you can not specify the location of the files. (This will also be a how to change offline files location guide for those that search for the problem in the future). It turns out the user of the computer tried to sync pictures from another computer and it failed (most likely because the folder was too large for the laptop). For our situation it was not a click and empty the folder solution. www.windows-vista-update.com/Offline_Files.html shows where we needed to go. We went into the control panel, clicked on offline files then disk usage. As soon as we did this we saw 50 GB in all offline files. Unlike that website, there was no move cache or delete files buttons and we could not decrease the limit. Going to http://www.vergentsoftware.com/blogs/ckinsman/CommentView,guid,29186945-831d-449a-8c73-d782ea89a0e7.aspx#commentstart shows were the location of the files are. When we got there it looked like the folder was 0bytes until we right clicked and went to properties. This gave some of the missing size but not all of it (it was all there and not displaying it). We tired to take ownership of the folder as suggested but we had to do that with every file and folder inside of it. Having thousands of pictures, we were not going to take ownership of all of them. We went to http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=697922 and found that we needed to
"Run the following command from an elevated command prompt and then restart
the machine:
REG ADD "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters" /v
FormatDatabase /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

To start an elevated command prompt, right click on cmd in your start menu
and select "Run as administrator""
What this code does is reinitialize (clearing and restarting) the offline files. Now if someone wants to change the location of the offline files they need to follow the steps microsoft lays out at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937475/en-us be very careful when doing this. Microsoft needs to fix this problem since the only way to change location is change things in the registry.

I see a lot of people are having this problem. Let me know if this works or doesnt work. If it doesnt and you found another answer let me know.

Another possible answer is the system restore usage. Windows is very stupid with system restore, by default, it is set to 15% of your hard drive. I found the info on how to reduce the number here.

here is the main part of the fix

"To recover some of that System Restore disk space, start up Vista's command line as an administrator, and run

	Code:
	vssadmin list shadowstorage

to see the current allocation. To change it, use:

	Code:
	vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

That is, to limit System Restore to 2 gigabytes on the C: drive, use:

	Code:
	vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB

Of course, limiting System Restore's drive footprint also limits how far back it can store points, so do so carefully."

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How to install back genuine vista after changing motherboard? My windows vista come pre-installed when i purchase my Compaq desktop. If I would like to change the motherboard, how can i get my genuine vista installed again? It didn't come with the installation CD..

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