How to remove Windows. old folder in C:\

There have been a lot of people purchasing and upgrading to Windows 7 now. Usually most of my friends will ask me to install it for them. However there are times when they install themselves and sometimes they do not "clean install" the windows to find out that they have this Windows.old folder in their C:\. It cannot be deleted like a normal folder in Windows Explorer. The removal of this windows improperly may lead to windows instability.



Windows.old folder is the folder created in your system drive (by default: C:\) when you perform Custom Installation of an operating system. This is when you do not format the drive for a Clean Installation. This folder contains all the files and folders from the previous operating system. This Windows.old may hog your free space in your drive that I have even seen a case when it hogs approximately 78GB in C:\.

To remove this folder, follow these easy steps:
1. Right click the drive from My Computer and choose Properties.


2. Choose the "Disk Cleanup" button and the scanning will take place. Then click on the "Clean up system  files"


3. Then select the same drive again that has windows.old folder on it. Another scanning will occur. Later then check the "Previous Windows Installations" box, and click OK.


4. Select "Delete Files".


Done! The windows.old folder will be removed.


Alternatively if this does not help you, you can download Lockhunter or Unlocker to remove the folder in the next reboot.

1 comments so far:

udaya said...

nice to know.

thank for the post

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