How to delete windows.old in windows 7
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Saturday, February 07, 2009 3:19 AMI was running 32 bit Win7 and I decided to upgrade to 64 bit because I bought 4 G more ram. Anyways, I've upgraded and there is a windows.old folder talking up like 23 gigs of my HD. The disk cleanup tool isn't very helpful. It does not have the same functions as the Vista version so I can't remove old copies of windows.
Any solutions?
Thanks a bunch
- Changed Type Mark L. FergusonModerator Saturday, February 21, 2009 1:41 AM
- Changed Type Nicholas LiMicrosoft Contingent Staff, Moderator Thursday, February 26, 2009 4:01 AM
All Replies
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Saturday, February 07, 2009 4:30 AMModeratorHow to remove the Windows.old folder that is generated when you perform a custom installation of Windows:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933212
Carey Frisch- Marked As Answer by Lawrence GarvinMVP, Editor Saturday, February 07, 2009 5:29 PM
- Unmarked As Answer by Lawrence GarvinMVP, Editor Saturday, February 07, 2009 5:29 PM
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Saturday, February 07, 2009 3:09 PM I've already tried that, and the Windows 7 disk cleanup program does not have the option to clean previous windows installations
I was wondering if there was a different way
- Proposed As Answer by Tikus66 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 8:24 PM
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Saturday, February 07, 2009 3:26 PMWhy did not you just delete the folder Windows.old as any other folder?
From any file manager: Windows explorer (Del), Total Commander (F8), etc.
It is the most natural and simple solution. I was exactly in Your situation:
Installed first (erroneously) 32 bit version instead of 64bit one, then installed
64 bit version in the same partition. And have deleted
Windows.old from the Total commander with no problems at all. Even UAC
was absolutely silent.
By the way, Windows 7 was installed 3 days ago (as a second OS),
but the new UAC did not interfere with none of my operations yet.
Which is very good: there is a chance that I will not shut him down
as I've done in Vista immediately after I've found the option
(which took me a day or so :). -
Saturday, February 07, 2009 3:28 PM
I'm sure this will work on Win7:
How to use the Disk Cleanup feature to delete the Windows.old folder after you install Windows Vista. Scroll down to the take ownership and cacls commands, here- Proposed As Answer by DarienHawk67 Monday, February 09, 2009 9:15 PM
- Marked As Answer by Mark L. FergusonModerator Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:37 PM
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Saturday, February 07, 2009 3:32 PMDeFoLinY said:
I've already tried that, and the Windows 7 disk cleanup program does not have the option to clean previous windows installations
I was wondering if there was a different way
Hi
Probably .old folder is not on drive you have selected.
I hope user account control is not disabled.
You may need to click on cleanup system files button first before to see option to remove .old folder -
Monday, February 09, 2009 9:17 PM
BurrWalnut has the right info. I have just cut and pasted from the link he provided.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++To delete the Windows.old folder from an earlier installation of Windows, follow these steps:- Click Start, type disk cleanup in the Start Search text box, and then click Disk Cleanup.
- In the Disk Cleanup Options dialog box, click Files from all users on this computer.
- In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
- Click to select the Previous Windows installation(s) check box, and then click OK.
- Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
- In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
- At the command prompt, type takeown /F <DriveLetter>:\<FolderName>\* /R /A, and then press ENTER.
Note When you run this command, you are granted ownership of the administrator group for the folder, of all the subdirectories in the folder, and of all the files in the folder. - At the command prompt, type cacls <DriveLetter>:\<FolderName>\*.* /T /grant administrators:F, and then press ENTER.
Note When you run this command, administrators are granted full rights to all files and to all folders. - At the command prompt, type rmdir /S /Q <DriveLetter>:\<FolderName>\, and then press ENTER.
Note When you run this command, all subfolders and all files in the specified folder are deleted. Additionally, the specified folder itself is deleted.
- Proposed As Answer by cchhuummllyy Friday, October 01, 2010 5:05 AM
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009 8:46 PM I know what you're going through. I had two aborted attempts at installing Windows 7 and it left two huge .old files on my drive. The answer the others are giving is if you are deleting them from a Vista OS. You, like I was, are trying to delete them from the Windows 7 OS. Here is how to do that:
Click on Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disc Cleanup
When the dialog box comes up, select the drive that has the .old files on it and click OK
The system then scans for the files to be cleaned up and another dialog box opens with the selection. Click on the button labeled Clean up system files at the bottom of that dialog box.
Another dialog box will come up, select the drive again that has the .old files on it. The system will perform another scan for the system files that need to be cleaned up.
After scanning, another dialog box opens up and there you will find a list of check boxes. Scroll through and check on the box labeled Older versions of Windows and click OK.
That should take care of them. The two aborted install attempts I had as .old files where taking up 16 gigs. This got rid of them.- Proposed As Answer by Tikus66 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 8:46 PM
- Marked As Answer by Carey FrischMVP, Moderator Monday, December 07, 2009 12:07 AM
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Saturday, July 18, 2009 1:59 AMhey i had the same issue aborted 3 windows 7 installs. the disk cleanup worked for the one labelled windows.old only however there was windows.old.000 etc including one called windows but wouldnt detect/delete these. just sequencially renamed them to windows.old and the program files.old.000 to .old etc and it worked. hope this helps someone else who had the same issue!
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009 12:22 PMYou can use Disk Cleanup . The Disk Cleanup exe file is located at C:\Windows\System32\cleanmgr.exe. Full article here http://techwoo.com/delete-windows-old-folder-by-disk-cleanup/
- Edited by Techwoo Tuesday, July 28, 2009 12:23 PM Edit link
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009 7:01 PMDo make sure that the Windows.old is from another version of Win7 and not your previous version of Windows. If it is your previous version of Windows and you delete it you will not be able to revert back to, say Vista, without doing a clean install.
If you are not planning on going back to your previous version then deleting Windows.old is no problem. -
Wednesday, August 05, 2009 1:11 AM
it worked! :) disk cleanup is all u need
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Wednesday, September 09, 2009 9:30 PMthank tikus66, this made the most sense,
I did work on my version of win7 version 7100 and 7600
I was able to regain over 33 gigs.. Thanks again!! :) -
Sunday, October 25, 2009 5:22 AM
I know what you're going through. I had two aborted attempts at installing Windows 7 and it left two huge .old files on my drive. The answer the others are giving is if you are deleting them from a Vista OS. You, like I was, are trying to delete them from the Windows 7 OS . Here is how to do that:
Thanks, worked perfectly for me!
Click on Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disc Cleanup
When the dialog box comes up, select the drive that has the .old files on it and click OK
The system then scans for the files to be cleaned up and another dialog box opens with the selection. Click on the button labeled Clean up system files at the bottom of that dialog box.
Another dialog box will come up, select the drive again that has the .old files on it. The system will perform another scan for the system files that need to be cleaned up.
After scanning, another dialog box opens up and there you will find a list of check boxes. Scroll through and check on the box labeled Older versions of Windows and click OK .
That should take care of them. The two aborted install attempts I had as .old files where taking up 16 gigs. This got rid of them. -
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 3:13 AM
Hi
Probably .old folder is not on drive you have selected.
I hope user account control is not disabled.
You may need to click on cleanup system files button first before to see option to remove .old folder
I just did this with my Win 7 install. It's just as Ventsislav Alexandriyski stated: Disk Cleanup will display the option to remove earlier Windows installations, but not until you have clicked the "cleanup system files " button. -
Monday, November 09, 2009 5:17 PM
Omg thank you so much! This got me another 80GB of space on my HD!
Thanks so much.
P.S.
I'm loving windows 7. Awesome comeback Microsoft. -
Thursday, November 19, 2009 1:59 AMI didn't have Previous Version listed in my Disk Cleanup until I "Right Clicked " on Disk Cleanup and then on "Run as Administrator" for the Delete Previous Windows check box to become available in Vista. This is also true for Windows 7.
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Friday, November 20, 2009 7:19 PMI found out that any protected and locked out file or folder can be unlocked and deleted by using this freeware. http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/ unlocker works for me every time for the last couple of years.
Windows will lock out files and folders if in use but unlocker will delete them. -
Tuesday, December 01, 2009 3:34 AMThank U soooo much Tiku66, just followed ur instructions and got rid of both the .old folder of 32 GB.
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Sunday, December 06, 2009 11:46 PMAwesome information guys, I was searching for a way to get rid of the .old files and now I've done it! It freed up about 87gigs on my HD.
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Monday, December 28, 2009 12:33 AMMake sure you "Run as Admin" if not the "older version of windows" options wont show up. I am thinking thats where some of the others were getting hung up.
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Friday, January 22, 2010 9:32 PM I am trying to remove Windows.old folder in Windows server 2008. Even if I run Disk Cleanup as Admin, I do not see the checkbox for Previous Windows installation. Has someone tried this in W2K8?
- Proposed As Answer by jiGSawgibbs Sunday, February 28, 2010 5:19 PM
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Sunday, February 07, 2010 5:10 AMThanks Tikus66, you saved me 51GB of space on my laptop from two previous wrong installations of Windows 7. First time Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bits, second time Windows Ultimate upgrade 32 bits, and last one Windows 7 Ultimate Full 64 bits. I hope I have don't it write this time. Many thanks for that help.
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Sunday, February 28, 2010 4:57 AMIf anyone's interested, this works fine on VMWare.
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Sunday, February 28, 2010 5:31 PMu need to right click on disc cleanup and run as admin, then u will see remove previous windows installations.....it works
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Sunday, March 14, 2010 3:43 PMThis trick will also work for Any folder that is protected by Windows7,
for example, I installed win7 and vista on different Harddrives on my pc, and I had trouble deleting the windows, program files, and programData from the different installations.. I tried everything but there was no way of deleting them... so what I eventually did was to rename them to windows.old (one by one) and run the procedure as described above.. and I could delete them one by one.. saved me sooo much disk space!
so if you have an old windows folder and can not delete it, simply rename it windows.old and run disc cleanup wizard. PS: Do remember which windows folder is the one that you actually use, otherwise you will make trouble for yourself :)
duck duck duck duck goose -
Monday, March 22, 2010 4:45 AMI wanna totally thank you for that answer because you just helped me get rid of 44.gb of old files that were doing absolutely no good at all except using up my disk space.
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010 11:13 AMI deleted it like any other folder and left it going all night since it takes a while. Now I can't boot into Windows 7. It just stays at my motherboard screen.
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Saturday, May 08, 2010 10:01 AM
I was running 32 bit Win7 and I decided to upgrade to 64 bit because I bought 4 G more ram. Anyways, I've upgraded and there is a windows.old folder talking up like 23 gigs of my HD. The disk cleanup tool isn't very helpful. It does not have the same functions as the Vista version so I can't remove old copies of windows.
Any solutions?
Thanks a bunchBEST POSSIBLE ANSWER :-
since you cant delete directly (SHIFT+DELETE )this windows.old folder from your active partition containing windows, because of UAC or TRUSTEDINSTALLER feature of windows, which protects system essential files from damage, thus..
Instead of relying on MICROSOFT's applications to delete windows.old, which involves cumbersome steps with so many complications, you should use a UBUNTU ( linux based OS ) live cd to directly delete ANY files or FOLDERs of your choice.
firstly, you need to boot frm the UBUNTU CD, THEN select
TRY UBUNTU WITHOUT MAKING ANY CHANGES TO YOUR COMPUTER
It will take you to UBUNTU's desktop and then go to PLACES at the top of the desktop screen, then browse to file or FOLDER of your choice and delete whatever you wanna delete without any windows's interference.
RESTART your computer ....
AND IT IS DONE.........................................................
:)
P.S. to UBUNTU, I just love it.....
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Thursday, May 13, 2010 5:57 PM
I know what you're going through. I had two aborted attempts at installing Windows 7 and it left two huge .old files on my drive. The answer the others are giving is if you are deleting them from a Vista OS. You, like I was, are trying to delete them from the Windows 7 OS . Here is how to do that:
Thanks, worked perfectly for me!
Click on Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disc Cleanup
When the dialog box comes up, select the drive that has the .old files on it and click OK
The system then scans for the files to be cleaned up and another dialog box opens with the selection. Click on the button labeled Clean up system files at the bottom of that dialog box.
Another dialog box will come up, select the drive again that has the .old files on it. The system will perform another scan for the system files that need to be cleaned up.
After scanning, another dialog box opens up and there you will find a list of check boxes. Scroll through and check on the box labeled Older versions of Windows and click OK .
That should take care of them. The two aborted install attempts I had as .old files where taking up 16 gigs. This got rid of them.
same with me.it worked totally.thank you -
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 4:21 AM
I know what you're going through. I had two aborted attempts at installing Windows 7 and it left two huge .old files on my drive. The answer the others are giving is if you are deleting them from a Vista OS. You, like I was, are trying to delete them from the Windows 7 OS . Here is how to do that:
Click on Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disc Cleanup
When the dialog box comes up, select the drive that has the .old files on it and click OK
The system then scans for the files to be cleaned up and another dialog box opens with the selection. Click on the button labeled Clean up system files at the bottom of that dialog box.
Another dialog box will come up, select the drive again that has the .old files on it. The system will perform another scan for the system files that need to be cleaned up.
After scanning, another dialog box opens up and there you will find a list of check boxes. Scroll through and check on the box labeled Older versions of Windows and click OK .
That should take care of them. The two aborted install attempts I had as .old files where taking up 16 gigs. This got rid of them.
Thank god and the awesome ms team for this. Mine was taking up 200gb and i had 2 versions of windows.old and it kept on asking for permission. Thank you a lot -
Saturday, June 26, 2010 12:15 PM thnx a lot........it wrkd!!!!! :)
- Proposed As Answer by MHJ Ali Saturday, July 10, 2010 5:41 PM
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Saturday, July 10, 2010 5:43 PM Click Start> All Programs> Accessories>>right-click "Command Prompt", and then click Run as administrator.
run following 3 commands on command prompt
takeown /F c:\Windows.old\* /R /Acacls c:\Windows.old\*.* /T /grant administrators:Frmdir /S /Q c:\Windows.old\
- Proposed As Answer by MHJ Ali Saturday, July 10, 2010 5:43 PM
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Sunday, July 18, 2010 6:23 PMThis doesnt work for me
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010 6:08 PM
ITS SO SIMPLE DEAR JUST FOLLOW THESE STEPS
1. CLICK START, ALL PROGRAMS, ACCESSORIES, SYSTEM TOOLS
2. CLICK DISK CLEANUP
3. SELECT THE DRIVE WHERE YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM IS INSTALLED, eg (C:)
4. AT THE BOTTOM OF THE NEXT APPEARD DIALOG BOX LOOK AT THE LEFT SIDE YOU CAN
FIND HERE "CLEAN UP SYSTEM FILES" CLICK ON IT AND AGAIN SELECT YOUR OPERATING
SYSTEM eg (C:) NOW ON THE NEXT APPEARED DIALOG BOX YOU CAN FIND THE OLD
WINDOWS REMOVAL OPTION (PREVIOUS WINDOWS INSTALLTION) IN THE LIST.
HOPE YOU GOT THE SOLUTION
AQEEL
- Proposed As Answer by MCIT Wednesday, July 21, 2010 6:08 PM
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Monday, July 26, 2010 12:57 AMPerfect but it must be stressed that the .old files only appear when you select the drive again
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010 11:49 AM
Well, i used a utility to take control of the windows.old folder and delete it.
It worked........... n btw it's just a tweak! :-)
- Proposed As Answer by steve2050 Friday, September 03, 2010 8:05 AM
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Sunday, September 26, 2010 1:38 PM
Worked perfectly! Believe it or not I freed up 160 gb from 2 installs!
Thanks!!
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Friday, October 01, 2010 5:07 AMwhy do other posters just repeat themselves with an answer that doesn't work and your correct answer goes unnoticed?
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Wednesday, October 06, 2010 3:48 PMIt does work.
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Friday, November 19, 2010 5:27 PMI knew I had 72GBs of disk space in Windows.old and this got rid of all of it. Thanks, Norm
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Thursday, December 23, 2010 7:18 PM
Ahh, finally! Found a way to get rid of it!
Thx!
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Tuesday, January 04, 2011 4:42 AMthanks you .......very much ......great..........its remove all old version windows file...........
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Tuesday, January 04, 2011 1:53 PM
Thanks helped me out a treat. I will mostly being clean installs from now on. Much easyier.
www.mypchealth.co.uk -
Thursday, January 13, 2011 10:59 PMThis almost works. Cacls has been deprecated to be replaced by Icacls. With that change, it works like a charm.
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Tuesday, January 18, 2011 7:27 PMDone what you have written out for Windows 7 and it works perfectly. Thanks mate here's a beer on me!
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Tuesday, January 25, 2011 3:45 AMI found that the disk cleanup method didn't work for me but this did: Disable UAC, reboot. Start the command prompt as admin. Navigate to the folder with the dodgy files in dos and then use the del command with *.* for the filenames. This deletes all the files in the folder regardless of the names. Exit the command prompt. In explorer the files are now gone, delete the folders as normal, re-activate UAC and re-boot. Job done.
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Monday, February 07, 2011 12:03 AM
I know what you're going through. I had two aborted attempts at installing Windows 7 and it left two huge .old files on my drive. The answer the others are giving is if you are deleting them from a Vista OS. You, like I was, are trying to delete them from the Windows 7 OS . Here is how to do that:
thank you. it worked on Windows 7
Click on Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disc Cleanup
When the dialog box comes up, select the drive that has the .old files on it and click OK
The system then scans for the files to be cleaned up and another dialog box opens with the selection. Click on the button labeled Clean up system files at the bottom of that dialog box.
Another dialog box will come up, select the drive again that has the .old files on it. The system will perform another scan for the system files that need to be cleaned up.
After scanning, another dialog box opens up and there you will find a list of check boxes. Scroll through and check on the box labeled Older versions of Windows and click OK .
That should take care of them. The two aborted install attempts I had as .old files where taking up 16 gigs. This got rid of them. -
Saturday, March 05, 2011 9:13 AMThanks so much i was running on Windows 7 Home Premium and i upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate and i had 80GB left now I have got 115GB it took about 10 mins you have to scan your drive 2 times aswell
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Friday, March 11, 2011 1:39 AMtnx u very much .... very usefull
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Friday, March 18, 2011 11:03 AMthanks bro, it works perfectly, with win7
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Wednesday, April 13, 2011 1:24 PMOn windows 7 just go to disk clean up and down bottom select clean system files and then you will see the option to deletes windows.old hope that help
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Saturday, May 14, 2011 5:32 AMThanks, I never thought to try that. Worked great
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Sunday, May 29, 2011 5:58 AMThank you so much! This method has worked perfectly for me!!!
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Saturday, June 04, 2011 2:20 PM
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Thursday, November 10, 2011 2:29 PMI just kept on through as you outlined, knocked off 26 GB from my installation. High fived the air and ate some Fritos after.
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Friday, December 16, 2011 10:13 PM
Thank you for this helpful tip, my windows.old files were taking up 564 gigs of space, my goodness. Now if Windows 7 will stop crashing to blue screen constanly I won't have to reinstall once a year. And the IE that comes bundled with this operating system is constanly crashing also. I must say I am not very happy with Windows 7 Ultimate, it is the worst $319.00 I ever spent. Oh Well, I am stuck with it now,lol.
Thanks again for this helpful solutions, and sorry about rambling on about how much I am displeased with Windows 7
Raven Whitehawk
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Thursday, January 26, 2012 1:04 AM
at last - a solution that actually works! THANK YOUClick Start> All Programs> Accessories>>right-click "Command Prompt", and then click Run as administrator.
run following 3 commands on command prompt
takeown /F c:\Windows.old\* /R /Acacls c:\Windows.old\*.* /T /grant administrators:Frmdir /S /Q c:\Windows.old\
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Friday, March 02, 2012 7:38 AM Click Start> All Programs> Accessories>>right-click "Command Prompt", and then click Run as administrator.
run following 3 commands on command prompt
takeown /F c:\Windows.old\* /R /Acacls c:\Windows.old\*.* /T /grant administrators:Frmdir /S /Q c:\Windows.old\
Everyone is saying "It's sooooo simple" etc. But it wasn't. I used disk cleanup as gang-recommended on this page and got NOWHERE with it. It could have been because I already attempted to delete it and got most of it deleted, failed to get some few kilobytes that remained, moved them around and tried deleting them in different places with all sorts of monkeying around with the name and icon what have you. Finally, after carefully putting the offending object back into its nest in c: and at my WITS END, I decided to try this arcane stuff suggested by MHJ Ali.... and by God it WORKED!!! Hahaha! Thanks MHJ Ali!!!- Proposed As Answer by Metacheck Friday, March 02, 2012 7:38 AM
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Friday, March 02, 2012 7:40 AMI agree. All other methods failed, but this one has REAL MEDICINE and true mojo!! It made arcane things happen and I wasn't sure if it would work until the very end, and yet it was like "Abracadabra" and get the hell out of here, Windows.old!!!!! Poof!! GONE.
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Saturday, March 03, 2012 7:58 AM
Thx for this info really helped was having a lot of trouble trying to get it off before i found this thread
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Saturday, March 10, 2012 11:01 PMJust a note, the system files cleanup options don't show up unless you right click and "run as administrator" when you open disc cleanup.
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Saturday, March 10, 2012 11:02 PMdisc cleanup needs to be "run as administrator"
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