Windows is impossible.

February 27, 2008 4:48 PM

I need to install a driver for my USB 2 PCI card but the driver requires Service Pack 1 and I do not have enough room on C to install it. What should I do?

I'm running Windows XP. C drive is 1.5gb with 430mb free (or less, depending on what Windows happens to be doing at the moment). D drive has 60gb free (no space problems there) USB 2 card is Dynex.

For some reason, Dynex will not allow me to install the driver for the USB 2 card unless I have Windows Service Pack 1 installed. When I try to install that, Windows tells me that I do not have enough hard drive space to do so.

I've tried to free up space. So far, I've moved the Temp directory over to D, I've removed all nonessential programs from C, and cleaned up and defragmented the drive. None of it clears up enough space for Service Pack 1 to install. (It needs 434mb free to install but, while it is scoping out my drive, it uses up 150 of the scant megabytes there are)

Is there any way that I can install the driver without having Service Pack 1? Is there any way that I can install Service Pack 1 on D? Is there any way to fix this other than reinstalling Windows on D or buying an different USB 2 card?

posted by waltzing astronomers to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

You can use the GParted LiveCD to resize your partitions without destroying your data.
posted by limon at 4:53 PM on February 27, 2008

I should mention that GParted is free. If you want a somewhat friendlier, commercial solution, check out Norton Partition Magic or Acronis Disk Director Suite. But I think you'll be fine with GParted if you follow the documentation: how to resize a partition.
posted by limon at 4:57 PM on February 27, 2008

Sorry for answer spam, but you might also consider turning off System Restore. Of course, if SP1 blows up your computer, you might be wishing you hadn't, but I've installed it on dozens and dozens of machines and never had a problem. You should also consider installing SP2 (or the pre-release of SP3).
posted by limon at 5:02 PM on February 27, 2008

Clean out the temp folder under your profile. Delete any of the uninstall junk under c:\windows

Or just get yourself an XP SP2 disc and do a repair install over your current install. That'll put the SP on there without having to extract the SP to temp and run it.

Or buy a real drive.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:10 PM on February 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Seconding a partition resize. Give yourself another few gig at least since SP3 will be out soon. Hell, might as well give yourself enough breathing space to put your Temp directory back and reinstall any of those "nonessential programs" you might have really wanted to keep.
posted by JaredSeth at 5:21 PM on February 27, 2008

Also move your swapfile to D:, then download the SP to D: and run it from there. You may be able to go further and run a command line to have the SP tempfiles on D: as well. I'm on a Mac right now so I can't provide the appropriate links, but they're there. The SP might be listed on a separate page as you go through the installation process. It'll be something like "Corporate Downloads" or "Other Formats" or whatever.
posted by rhizome at 6:19 PM on February 27, 2008

If you're going the SP standalone route, here's the link for SP2.
While GParted should be able to do the trick for you, Acronis Disk Director has a free trial for desktops and is pretty intuitive to use for resizing partitions.
posted by jmd82 at 6:53 PM on February 27, 2008