¿You have just installed Windows 10 on a PC that you already had an older version of Windows? Do you have Windows XP / 7/8 and have you upgraded to Windows 10? Then you probably came across the folder Windows.old someday and want to delete it.
Usually it is in the main partition of our hard drive and the truth is that it takes up a lot of space. A valuable space that we can free up and use for other purposes. Hence, we will see in today’s post How to delete the Windows.old folder correctly and without complications. So we have a little more space in (C 🙂 to install programs, save documents, videos or whatever we want.
What is the Windows.old folder and what is it for?
It is never a good idea to delete a folder from your system without knowing exactly what it is doing. In this case, Windows.old is the folder where they are saved All system files and user documents from the previous Windows installation we had that in the team.
When we install Windows 10 on a computer that has previously had the Microsoft operating system installed, it will be collected and saved in case we ever want to go back to the previous version. This folder is usually called Windows.old or Windows.old.000 (if we have more than one previous installation) and its size is usually between 4GB and 25GB.
If we are sure that the information should not be stored there at all, the best thing to do is to delete it.
When we enter “Windows.old” we see that there is a folder with our username. Inside we find all the personal folders like “Downloads”, “Documents”, “Music”, “Pictures” and even the files on the desktop. Remember to make a backup in case you want to keep any of these files.
How to properly delete Windows.old
If we try to delete the Windows.old folder the traditional way, the system will get in our way (permissions required, etc.). We have several alternatives to carry out a clean erasure.
1 # Wait a month: Windows.old will delete itself
If we wait 30 days Windows itself automatically deletes the folder. After the month is up, the system understands that we no longer need to revert to a previous version and so it deletes the backup stored in Windows.old to Free up storage space.
2 # use disk cleanup
If we have a 125 or 250 GB SSD hard drive, the 20 gigs the copy of Windows.old takes up can make a huge difference. In this case, we can skip the month of waiting and delete the folder ourselves.
- First we open the “Fat plate cleaningUsing the Windows Taskbar Finder. Select “Run as administrator” from the suggestions available, as shown below.
- This will open the room cleaner. Select the drive on which the Windows.old folder is located. It is usually located on drive (C :).
- Click on “Clean up the system files”.
- In this new window we mark the option “Previous Windows installations”.
- We click on “Accept”To start the deletion process.
Upon completion we will see that the Windows.old folder (and also Windows.old.000 if we had a second installation) is gone from the root directory of (C :).
3 # Delete Windows.old from the Settings menu
Disk Cleanup is a great tool, however Some out of date files cannot always be removed from the system. If we have problems removing all files from the Windows.old folder, we can try another way: through the Windows Settings menu:
- Click the Windows Start button and enter “Settings” (gear icon).
- Enter “System”.
Click on “Storage” in the menu on the left and select the “Temporary Files” option.
- This shows us a list of all the temporary files on the computer that can be deleted. Make sure the boxes are checked «Cleaning up Windows updates“Y”Temporary data«.
- Finally, click the Remove Files button to delete the files and free up space on your hard drive.
4 # Manually delete Windows.old by changing the read permissions
This last method is the least orthodox, although we can’t say that it doesn’t work either. It’s slower than using the Fat plate cleaning, the system has to be used here Change the permissions for each folder and file that’s what Windows.old is all about.
- We click with the right mouse button on the Windows.old folder and select “characteristics”.
- We deactivate the tab “Read only“And click”Apply”.
- In this new window we mark “Apply changes to this folder and all subfolders and files“And click”Accept”.
This process can take several minutes. Once the permissions change is complete, all we have to do is Select the Windows.old folder and delete it in the traditional way (right button and “Get rid of”Or we press the delete key).
If you found this post interesting, you can check out the rest of the blog’s tutorials and tricks in the category Windows. There are some who are really good!