I have one system running Parallels 11, Windows 7 and one running Parallels 12, Windows 8. Both systems will be upgraded to Windows 10. I want to keep backups for both Win 7/8 VMs. Both 7/8 were updated from Windows XP 1-2 years ago. I'm running (as far as possible) the exact same workload on all VMs. One app I have to run under Windows, som support apps (Notepad++, WinMerge, 7Zip, that kind of stuff). The XP VM was always around 25GB in size. The Win 8 VM is around 36GB in size. But the Win 7 has been giving size problems for quite a time now. It was around 30GB, but now has ballooned to 65GB in size and sometimes just fills up and Windows stops working properly. It seems to fill up with error/logging data, but I'm unsure what exactly (I'm not very good at Windows) and what has caused this. I've tried to clean up the VM and at one time I was able to get Win 7 to create 16GB free on the virtual HD, but Parallels 11 was never able to compress it. Now, before I put the machine in archive and I start updating (possibly also to Parallels 12), I'd like to perform a final attempt at getting the Win 7 HDD shrunk by Parallels 11. Can somebody give me tips on how to get Parallels 11 to shrink a disk about which Windows 7 says there is 16GB free. What could stop Parallels 11 to compress that disk?
Small addition: the old Win XP image was actually 15GB (it had a snapshot). I can resize it to 52GB according to Parallels (which fits the 13GB that is free). Resizing and Expanding disk are both turned on. The Win 8 currently has a snapshot that takes up 12GB, so in reality it is 23GB or so. Only the Win7 VM's HD is 65GB (13GB free, not compressable).
I'm going to create a new thread. I've successfully upgraded a copy of this VM to Windows 10. Windows 10 was able to remove 40GB of junk (previous Windows installs, it seems). However, Parallels 11 is still unable to compress the disk.
No, it just says there is 0 to compress. Note: after moving to Win 10 on a copy of this VM, I was able to a) clean Windows up even more (40GB - mostly old windows install stuff according to Win10 Disk Cleanup) and b) compress with Parallels 11.
