Someone had posted a comment on my blog asking how I get my VPC images down to a reasonable size, so I figured I'd share it here.  It's not the most fun process, but it does manage to get a VPC image down from about 5+ gigs, to about 1.5 or so.  To start, make sure you do not have undo disks turned on.

  1. Create a backup copy of your VPC image, you'll need this later, and it's good to have in case anything goes wrong.
  2. In the Add/Remove Components in the control panel, remove any software (applications and Windows components) that you don't need
  3. Clear the DLL cache
    at the command prompt, type "sfc /cachesize=1"
    reboot the computer
    at the command prompt, type "sfc /purgecache"
  4. Delete all $something$ files from the %windir% directory except $hf_mig$.  They are hidden files, so you'll need to make sure to make them visible
  5. Clear %windir%\ServicePackFiles
  6. Clear %windir%\DriverCache\ie386 folder
  7. Clear %windir%\System32\wbem\AutoRecover folder
  8. Clear %windir%\web\wallpaper folder
  9. Clear %windir%\temp folder
  10. Clear %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download folder
  11. Delete all log files (use windows search utility) except:
    %windir%\System32\msdtc\msdtc.log
    %windir%\System32\msdtc\trace\dtctrace.log
    %windir%\debug\usermode\chkacc.log
    %windir%\system32\wbem\logs\wmiprov.log
    Some log files may not allow you to delete them, that is okay
  12. Clear %ProgramFiles%\WindowsUpdate folder
  13. Turn off System Restore for XP
    open the System control panel, and select the System Restore tab
    select Turn Off System Restore, then click Apply/OK
  14. Set maximum event log sizes and clear all events
    open event viewer
    right click on Application and click Properties
    in the Log Size section, select Overwrite events as needed
    in the Log Size section, set the Maximum Log Size to 512kb
    click Clear Log, and click No on the save dialog
    repeat for Security and System logs
  15. Turn off/remove the page file
    open the System control panel, and select the Advanced tab
    in the Performance section, click Settings
    on the Advanced tab, in the Virtual Memory section, click Change
    in the Virtual Memory dialog box, click No Paging File and click Set, OK and restart the virtual machine
  16. Clear the IE cache
  17. Clear the %DocumentsAndSettings%\All Users\Documents\Shared Music folder
  18. Clear the %DocumentsAndSettings%\All Users\Documents\Shared Pictures folder
  19. Clear the %DocumentsAndSettings%\All Users\Documents\Shared Videos folder
  20. Empty the Recycle Bin
  21. Defrag the VPC image
    create a new VPC system, with your back up VHD as the primary HD and the working VHD as the secondary hard disk.  This way, there is no chance that any system files will be in use as you defrag the working VHD.  Shut down the backup VPC and return to the working VPC
  22. Run the PreCompact tool on the working VHD
    capture the precompactor.iso from %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual Machine Additions and allow it to auto run on the machine.  This could take anywhere between 5 minutes and several hours.
  23. Shut down the VPC and run the Virtual Disk Wizard compact tool

That's it, in 23 "easy" steps, you can get your VPC image down from about 5 gigs to just under 1.4 gigs.  These are the steps that I use to compact my images down for the IE VPC's.  I then use some kind of compression to (iexpress.exe) to create the .EXE installer. 

I've not tried this on a Vista machine, so I can't tell you for sure what you can delete and what you need to keep, as I'm not 100% sure what changed.