Windows 7 - Windows.old Folder - Delete

Me either.

Hi, something very similar has worked for me with vista, somehow vista ended up on my old d: which has become my c: for some reason and as such I had vista on my other partiton which was the old one, renaming it windows.old using the unlocker facility to do this, the disk cleanup tool then let me clear it up, but this has at least cleared up almost 8gb or so of data.

i noticed that when i clicked on a shortcut to a program in the windows.old folder, the program still ran. Does deleting the folder actually uninstall those programs? i was afraid that if i deleted the folder, the programs would still be installed, only without the rest of it's components. i've always thought that to properly uninstall a program and all of its components, you had to go through control panel. i'm sorry if this is confusing...

Hello Mr.Sero5, and welcome to Seven Forums.

While you may still be able to run some programs that are in the C:\Windows.old folder from a shortcut targeting it in that location, the program is not actually installed on your computer. It will not be included in the list of installed programs in Programs and Features in the Control Panel.

The C:\Windows.old folder is just a backup of your previous installation for Windows to be able to recover it incase there was a failure during your current installation. After you have copied any personal files from the C:\Windows.old folder back into your main user folders, then it would be best to reinstall the programs you want to have them run properly and delete the C:\Windows.old folder from within Disk Cleanup. Deleting the C:\Windows.old folder will remove all programs and files in it from your computer to regain that space back on your hard drive.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

thanx for sharing...i can save a lot of space now!

I just clicked the folder then used the Shift+ Delete key to quickly delete it.

Hmm... will this work too?

Hello Lloyd,

Yes, that may work as well, but using Disk Cleanup is just the normal method to use.

Well I deleted everything in the windowsold folder doing everything here but still can't delete the folder itself. This is what I have left.

C:\WindowsOld\Documents and Settings\My Name\Application Data\SecuROM\UserData

Trying to delete any one of those folders gives a "cannot find the item" error. Basically windows is saying nothing is there when I'm looking right at it. Beats me on what is going to be able to get rid of this short of a clean install.

Hello Mike,

Did you try to use Disk Cleanup to delete the Windows.old folder as described in the tutorial on the first page??

As I said, I did everything posted.