Remove Old Windows System from Windows 10

Discussion in 'Windows 10' started by armadillotuff, Aug 14, 2015.

  1. armadillotuff

    armadillotuff MDL Member

    Feb 2, 2013
    177
    30
    10
    Stumbled upon something by accident. I was trying to remove c:\old.windows from my Windows 10 Professional system to get back about 18GB and none of the administrators command options seemed to work. By accident I brought up a CCleaner application and under the advanced section was a box unchecked called Old Windows Installations. I checked the box, ran the analyze program, and it deleted all of the Old Windows systems. Got back over 18Gb from the old system. Hope this helps someone else with a simple method to get rid of the Old Windows if you have no plans for restoring backwards.:clap:
     
  2. odiebugs1

    odiebugs1 MDL Expert

    Jul 30, 2015
    1,390
    465
    60
    All you have to do is run disk cleanup on C: then run clean system files, there you can remove windows old. For anyone who doesn't want to install CCleaner.
     
  3. wahoospa

    wahoospa MDL Novice

    Jul 23, 2012
    39
    2
    0
    The Windows.old folder actually contains all the files and data from your previous Windows installation. It can be used to restore your system to the old version of Windows if you don’t like the new version. They will automatically be deleted in about 30 days or so.
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  4. pf100

    pf100 Duct Tape Coder

    Oct 22, 2010
    2,069
    3,447
    90
    And you can cheat like me and do endless clean installs without formatting and then from windows.old move my documents, videos, music, and downloads to my current install folders and delete windows.old from disk cleanup. That way I have a clean install with all of my old files and no wasted space, which fragments the drive, but a defrag fixes that.
     
  5. done1

    done1 MDL Novice

    Jul 11, 2015
    15
    3
    0
    you will have a lot of lost space. even if you remove windows.old you still losing around 10 gig
     
  6. genenioo

    genenioo MDL Addicted

    Oct 9, 2007
    654
    113
    30
    Just run disk cleanup and one of the choices is to remove old Windows installations--it will remove the Windows.old folder and everything else associated with 7.