BleepingComputer.com: Just Installed Vista

I just installed Vista Ultimate 64-bit (got it from a friend who already had vista, and he won this in a contest. All I had to do was buy him a 40$ power supply and put it in). It's been really nice so far, once I turned the UAC, Firewall, and all the protection off (I'm willing to risk it to be less annoyed) .

Enough of my ranting, is it ok to delete my old windows files (the actual files to run the OS)? When I did a clean install of Vista it still kept all my old files and the actual Windows files. I'm wondering if this is really needed? I was thinking maybe it was so some of my older programs could still work, but if it doesn't I want to delete it because I'm down to like 7-8gb on my hard drive. Thanks!

If you did a clean install it would not keep anything if you did an upgrade it still uses some of the files thats why its cheaper. If you did an upgrade you should look at the pinned posting on the vista help page it shows you how to do a clean install from an upgrade. Vista takes up alot more space then XP so I would not recommend moving or deleting any files unless you are 100 sure each file you want to delete is not being used

Thanks for the reply!

What I don't understand is I went to do the upgrade option by putting the disc in, but it wouldn't let me since I wanted to use 64-bit, and I was only running 32-bit XP. So I tried booting off the disc, and I don't really remember what it said from there, but it kept all my old windows files, and I thought it was going to delete everything.

Anyways, I guess I'll just leave it. I'm hopefully getting a 250gb hard drive for christmas.