Deleting Old Windows

[Nanotasi]

Hi All,
This is my first post. I recently had major problems accessing the internet and some other problems, so I reinstalled Win 7 Home Premium. I had problems reinstalling anmd had to do it a couple of times. I now find in explorer that I have Windows.old, windows.old000 and windows old.001. They do not shown in uninstall. They are taking up a lot of space and when I try to delete them I get messages saying that I need system permission to delete some files, so the folders will not delete. How do I get rid of them.

I originally wanted to reformat the hard drive (after backing up everything I wanted on an external HDD) but at teh command prompt I was told thatI did not have sufficient privileges.
Can anyone tell me how I can get the privileges to reformat the HDD.

I have also found now that my internet connection is running so sloww as to be useless. It is down loading at about 600 BYTES per sec.

My copy of Win 7 is OEM and Microsoft say that support is the resposibility of the installer.

Any help would be gratefully recieved

 

[Kari]

Hi Nanotasi, welcome to the Seven Forums.

WIndows.old folder is created when Windows is reinstalled without formatting the system hard disk. It contains the files and folders from your old Windows installation. Any subsequent reinstall adds a number to the Windows.old, starting from 000.

The Windows.old on your disk contains your original Windows installation, Windows.old000 is then the files from your first reinstall and so on. You can safely delete these folders, this tutorial tells you how: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19151-windows-old-folder-delete.html

You can format your system disk during the installation if you start the installation by booting your computer from installation DVD. If you start the installation from Windows, inserting DVD when Windows is running and starting installation from your Windows Desktop, this option is not available.

Kari

 

[Nanotasi]

Many thanks, Kari. Will get into it later today and will let you know how it goes.

Nano

 

[gregrocker]

Booting the installer is also a cleaner install which may give you better performance.

Follow these tips to get a perfect reinstall: Reinstalling Windows 7

If you want to keep what you've got and try to troubleshoot the problems, you can delete windows.old using Disk Cleanup.

Then work through these troubleshooting steps to monitor logs for repeat problems and use System resources to work out any kinks.