can't delete windows.old

[night_hawk112]

I give up....it says first I need a permission from Trustedinstaller to delete WINDOWS in windows.old, and a SYSTEM permission to delete some other stuff...

How to go around this?

P.S. I see that Microsoft didn't resolve the problem of C: partition filling up bu itself with god knows what, even tho I only have the system on it and nothing else, and I do regular cleanups...

 

[Wayfall]

Well deleting windows old for me has always worked for me through disk cleanup till just recently when It deleted everything inside except an apparently empty windows folder. Trusted installer is a program inside windows that has its oh user permissions that are above your own admin one.... ye I know dum isn't it.

I had to go through forums and youtube to find out how to remove trusted installers authorisation from a file I wanted deleted as it was messing up my windows making it think it wasn't valid when it was. Still haven't figured how to remove the apparently empty windows old folder.

 

[USAFRet]

I give up....it says first I need a permission from Trustedinstaller to delete WINDOWS in windows.old, and a SYSTEM permission to delete some other stuff...

You delete that in Disk Cleanup.
Or, wait 30 days.

 

[Flying Head]

There must be an easier way... but for each file and directory I took ownership. Then I could delete them, one by one. Luckily there weren't many files or directories. And, it was good exercise.

 

[ktolo]

There must be an easier way... but for each file and directory I took ownership. Then I could delete them, one by one. Luckily there weren't many files or directories. And, it was good exercise.

I used to do that until i realised you can take ownership of the top level folder and all the underlings will then belong to you.
It saved me time (..and exercise!)

 

[PanStef]

Well to delete the windows.old folder which i assume takes up much space you could wait 30 days, delete it manually (the exact path is "C:\Windows.old")... If i have understood well it doesn't let you delete it due to insufficient folder or drive permissions. I don't know how these windows protocols work but try to log in as an admin. Another option is to navigate to: Settings > Backup. There if my memory doesn't play games on me there should be an option to delete windows.old. If none of these things seem to work try using a registry error fixing program (CCleaner is a great option although <mod edit>). As far as the C: drive filling up all by it self you can read my thread in which i had the same problem and the solution is actually pretty easy.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2447249/storage-space-bug.html

Hope I helped


<Don't suggest that again. Thanks>

 

[night_hawk112]

Well to delete the windows.old folder which i assume takes up much space you could wait 30 days, delete it manually (the exact path is "C:\Windows.old")... If i have understood well it doesn't let you delete it due to insufficient folder or drive permissions. I don't know how these windows protocols work but try to log in as an admin. Another option is to navigate to: Settings > Backup. There if my memory doesn't play games on me there should be an option to delete windows.old. If none of these things seem to work try using a registry error fixing program (CCleaner is a great option although paid but it won't take much to find a crack). As far as the C: drive filling up all by it self you can read my thread in which i had the same problem and the solution is actually pretty easy.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2447249/storage-space-bug.html

Hope I helped

Hm, seems I forgot about disk cleanup no matter, will try it....but the last update was more then 30days ago (or was it?), so I think that it should delete it....this is the first time I see windows.old, except when I went from Win 8,1 to Win 10, I dunno what happened, probably some new update.....

 

[USAFRet]

Disk Cleanup. Why bother with any other weird method? It's built right into the OS.

 

[Wayfall]

Well usually when I have to reinstall the OS onto the same drive I get a windows old folder because of this so I transfer anything I forgot to before the install from the windows old to the new documents folder, I would then use disc clean up to remove windows old and sometime it gets removed sometimes it doesn't as in the folder is their but apparently empty.

The only way I have ever found of getting rid of it was wiping my hard drive and I mean as I recently got an SSD so I did a clean install onto that with only that drive installed as having my old HDD in would make windows pick up the old copy of windows on the HDD and screw up the boot order.

I would then transfer the files I wanted off my HDD such as game saves, music and other media then I wiped the HDD clean.

Also if I ever just left the folder when it appeared empty it would not delete after 30 days as some people say it should.