Windows.Old Files... Can they be deleted?

jrrdmchls

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Feb 18, 2010
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I recently threw together a decent rig from a bunch of old parts. Installed vista upgraded to windows 7 home premium and am planning on going on to Win10 soon. My question is can i delete the window.old files from my hard drive?
 
Solution


Not sure on this.

jrrdmchls

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Feb 18, 2010
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So instead of cleaning up my windows install before I upgraded to 10. I did the upgrade and ran cleanmgr.exe. However, there is still a Windows.old file with lots of fun stuff inside. I cannot just delete the folder because it is protected. I have Windows 10, AVG, CPU-z and Chrome installed and my Hard drive is reporting that i have over 50 gigs with of space being used.... This seems quite excessive for what I have installed. Is this normal or not?
 

USAFRet

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Disk Cleanup, Remove System Files. (or words to that effect)
 

jrrdmchls

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Feb 18, 2010
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Ok, so found the remove system files linky on the disk cleanup. Its telling me that its protected and wont continue. Do i need to do this in "safe" mode?
 

USAFRet

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No, it should not require safe mode. It will require an admin account password.
 

jrrdmchls

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Feb 18, 2010
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...And if i just bypassed password protecting this machine during setup, I will need to setup an admin I suppose?
 

jrrdmchls

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Feb 18, 2010
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OK got it figured out. Because I didn't create a password when I installed Win10. It wouldn't let me delete the files. So to remedy this I created a password for the default user which happens to be the Admin. Went back and ran disk cleanup and i was able to clean out almost 30 gigs with of old files. Thanks for the help!