Windows 10: Automatic maintenance and windows.old

I know windows.old can be purged by the user but I am curious about how often disk clean up runs as part of automatic maintenance. After the upgrade to fall creators both our machines were left with sizeable 20 odd gigs of windows.old

i left it about ten days and then gave both machines I decent amount of idle time. Sure enough the daily auto maintenance kicked in and deleted most of the windows.old contents. But on both machines windows.old still exists, albeit much smaller in size. I seem to remember this happening after other feature updates. Basically first time round most of the file gets deleted but leaves remnants and then sometime after the whole folder disappears as auto maintenance clicks into gear again. However, having had auto maintenance recover most of the space from windows.old back on 30 Oct I tonight switched on, did a few tasks and then gave about thirty mins idle time. Looking at the cpu meter (8 gadgets) auto maintenance certainly seemed to kick in but windows.old was untouched. So it still remains making me wonder whether disk clean up part of auto maintenance is not necessarily a daily task?

:)

 

How do I delete the Windows.Old and Windows.BT directories without jumping through hoops

Simply wait 30 days and the auto maintenance will do it automatically. By design Microsoft has prevented the average user from deleting the windows.old folder to safeguard them from themselves

 

Automatic Maintenance

I have Automatic Maintenance enabled for 2:00am everyday. Without any warning while browsing it just started to run on it's own. What is the point of setting it up on a schedule if it chooses to run whenever it wants? Which leads me to my next question;
does my computer have to be on at 2:00am for this maintenance? I would greatly appreciate it if someone knows the answer to these two questions.

 

You can run diskclean and after first scan select system files to remove it your self it normally waits about 30 days before it removes it as its used for the option to role back if needed

 

@Samuria, it was 30 days in 1507 and 1511. For the Anniversary Update 1607 and all subsequent versions, Microsoft reduced it to 10 days. Apparently their telemetry told them that those who were going to switch back invariably did so in the first week.

https://www.computerworld.com/articl...ce-period.html

 

Yes, I know I can run disk cleanup myself. I was just curious as to how things went under automatic maintenance. It seems odd that auto maintenance deleted much of the windows.old content but left the folder behind. On one machine it’s still just over 1 gig in size. It’s happenend before and seems auto maintenance needs a couple of run throughs before it the system completely purges windows.old on its own. So I was a bit miffed that having left both systems idle yesterday they didn’t purge the remaining windows.old contents. Perhaps disk clean up runs weekly as part of the auto maintenances varied tasks ?

 

There are also times when Windows, for whatever reason, mislabels some drivers in Windows.old as being in use and refuses to delete it completely altogether until the user takes their own initiative to delete it.

 

Ah ok, that makes possible sense. Say a user didn't know about disk clean up or just couldn't be bothered to delete the windows.old remnants and just leave the folder there. Would the presence of windows.old cause problems further down the line? For example, the next feature update a few months down the line. Presumably the installation of it would try to generate a new windows.old. Is the system going to throw a strop because an older windows.old is already there?

Thanks
Wayne

 

I think the next major update/upgrade would just add to the existing windows.old.