Shrinking Virtual PC Images / VMs

To Shrink VM:

Open and Boot the guest OS.

Inside the Guest OS:

Go to disc clean up, remove temp files etc.

Defrag hard drive

Using VPCon the Host, mount "Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso"
which is found in :

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual Machine Additions

of your Host machine.


Start Iso, this will prepare your virtual hard disk ( go for a coffee )

When done, shutdown the VM.

In VPC choose "Settings" for your image in question, and go to the "Hard Disk 1" section and on the right side you can use the "Virtual Hard Disk Wizard" button.

Choose to edit an image and find your target image and choose to "Compact" it. ( Go away for a week )

When you come back you should have a smaller VM, and a larger electricity bill.