windows.old = Making me mental.

Help?

Hey everyone! New here as one could tell.

To start off, desperately need help. I’m at my last hair and still have no idea how to resolve this issue.

Windows.old = I absolutely cannot delete it. No matter what I do. I’ve already checked the permissions, tried the disk clean-up, tried deleting it manually by dragging and dropping as well as trying in safe mode. I even used a software and every other tutorial on the web. And yet I still cannot delete this folder. I constantly get told that access is denied etc etc. I’ve spend the past 24 hours Googling as well as trying the good old try and see what happens options. Still nothing. Not to mention the system freezes every 2 seconds making it difficult to do anything. Even safe mode.

To the operating system/problem in question:

Windows 7 Home x64 bit. The laptop I’m trying to repair was completely messed up (Spyware, Trojan and all that good stuff). Upon trying to repair it, I figured just re-installing Windows 7 would do the trick to get a nice fresh start. I should have known better. Now I have this windows.old file that won’t budge. Is there ANY WAY I can get rid of it? One I may have not tried yet? Put into account that everything freezes everytime I tried to do something on the OS. I really don’t want to attempt at doing another Windows reinstall and get this problem again. :/

If there’s any other specs you need, I’ll provide them as much as possible given the system won’t freeze up again.

(I hope this is posted in the correct category)

Hmm, I've never heard of the Windows.old folder not wanting to delete. There are three options off the top of my head that you can try.

First, if there's nothing in the folder itself, you can just make it hidden and your last hair will be able to live. You can do that by right clicking on it, Properties, and near the bottom of the box, check Hidden under Attributes.

Second, is the more drastic move to permanently get rid of it. If you have a spare burnable CD, use it. Then download ubuntu 11 or 10(too many versions of the operating system!)and use Windows Disk Image Burner to burn the ISO file onto the CD. Make sure the download is an ISO though. THEN, reboot, select the CD drive as the boot drive from either BIOS or the boot menu during POST. It'll start up the ubuntu installer screen, there's an option that says Try unbunt. Do so, it'll let you use the system without installing anything.

Next, navigate to System? from the top, Local Computer, go into your hard drive, and you'll be able to delete Windows.old once and for all. It's a process, I know.

I use ubuntu to delete files that Windows for some reason has permission rules on it.

Thirdly. you can take control of the folder by right clicking, Properties, Security, Edit, and changing the permissions to yourself. That sometimes works. The other route I've seen to to delete ALL the deletable files in the folder, and deleting ALL files in the other folders. Then delete the actual folder. For example, delete every file in My Documents, then delete the folder, do the same with the other folder, THEN, deleting Windows.old.

The disk cleanup program, according to your particular installation, does not always automatically select the Windows.old by default. Try this:
Open disk cleanup.
In windows that comes up, select the drive that has the .old files on it and click OK

It will, of course, scans for the files to be cleaned up. Another windows will open with the selection.
Click on the button labeled Clean up system files , which is right at the bottom of that dialog box.

Yet another window pops up, select the drive again that has the windows .old files on it. The system will perform another scan for the system files that need to be cleaned up.
After scanning, another window 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.

Thanks for the replies and help!

We've tried everything, and in the end, it was the harddrive that failed. A new one is on its way. The one we had was severely damaged, and there were tons of rootkits all over it. It was better to replace it.