VDI freespace is not reported correctly by the Guest OS (Linux Host/Vista32 guest)

[Todd Waltr]

Build r55467 HOST is Gentoo Linux, 2.6.32 (x86_64 w/32 emul.) on an ext4/luks partition HOST file system has 35 GBs free

Guest is a licensed copy of Vista Business (32bit) Guest file system reports 15.3 G of 15.9 used (NTFS5) It should be ~8 GB used. Guest was configured with dynamic disks.

Problem presented itself after applying the Vista SP2 standalone patch to Guest OS

I looked through the other bugs but most of them seemed concerned with the host system running out of space instead of the guest OS.

When zeroing the free space, the reported free space counted down to 0 and popped the Disk Cleanup utility which, despite only deleting a few KBs of data reported freeing 600MB.

I have examined all the usual suspects for hidden files by mounting the image through loop0 to make sure it wasn't Vista being Vista. Ran chkdsk, defrag & sdelete -c to no effect. Free space continues to loop from 600MB to 0MB.

I will attempt to use the clonehd trick to try and bring it back to life. Failing that, I will try to run through the install process again as everything seemed to fall apart as I crossed the 8GB boundary and I want to test that.

[Todd Waltr]

PLEASE CLOSE!

In examining the usual Vista suspects for space consumption I blanked on the WinSxS folder which, in hindsight, should have been obvious after the SP1 installation failures I experienced.