Windows 10: Clean Install of Win 10 - how to remove installation files that failed

Hi,

I hope folks can help with this one.

After a failed HDD and purchase of a new drive, I then did a clean install of Windows 10 from a disk image - except it failed part-way through throwing up an error.

I tried again and it again failed part-way through.

I tried for a third time with a different disk and the installation failed again (albeit at a different point)

I tried for a fourth time with an image on a USB stick - and SUCCESS!

However, in addition to a Windows folder in C: drive, I now also have folders called Windows.old (10.1Gb), Windows.old.000 (7.40Gb) and Windows.old.001 (13.2Gb).

I logged into the Administrator account and tried to delete these folders - but I get an error message that SYSTEM needs to give permission (how can I get SYSTEM to give permission?).

I tried opening an elevated command prompt to use the RMDIR and DELTREE DOS commands.

The DELTREE command says " 'deltree' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch command" and RMDIR gives the message "The directory is not empty".

Question is, how can I get rid of these folders which are useless and occupying 30.7Gb of my new HDD space?





Cheers

Art

:)

 

How can I clean install windows 10 (remove old OS personal data totally)

1.How can I clean install windows 10 (remove old OS personal data totally)

• 
  Install windows 10 DVD in a blank HDD
  
• 
  Launch windows 10 upgrade from windows update and select clean install
  
• 
  Launch windows 10 DVD in windows 7/8.1 and select clean install
  
• 
  Upgrade from windows 7/8.1 and delete backup file of OS
  

2.Customer has upgrade to windows 10 from windows 8.1. If customer’s HDD failed what’s the best way to work with windows 10 again?

1. Install win 8.1 and upgrade to windows 10 again

2. Install windows 10 from ISO file directly to blank HDD

 

Install Win 10 Upgrade Direct from Win 7 Pro - Do Not 1st Clean Install Win 10 ISO - If You Want Free Activation

Upgrade Win 10 install fails after 100% MSFT download of Win 10.

Own legal Win 7 Pro license. The other day, force downloaded then made clean install of Win 10 on separate drive to have a dual boot system. Realized to activate Win 10, I need to upgrade to Win 10 direct from Win 7 first, before making a Win 10 clean install.
Wiped clean install.

Now, when trying the direct upgrade route, Win 10 Upgrade install repeatedly fails after 100% Win 10 MSFT download.

0. Made system image of Win 7 pro. Made sure all files were backed up to other drives.

1. Forced Win 10 download
wuauclt.exe /updatenow

2. Created a bootable ISO file using ESD Image for
Windows 10

3. Installed Win 10 on separate drive from Win 7 pro

4. Discovered direct upgrade is necessary to let MSFT cloud know Win 10 is legal!!!!

5. Tried downloading Win 10 - download fails repeatedly

6. Tried to install Win 10 by iso upgrade - says it can't be done

7. MSFT Win 10 scheduled upgrade - download "fails" after 100% download

 

If it's a true clean install, you wouldn't have a folder (or folders) like that, so I wonder just exactly what you did.

Did you format the disk after a failed attempt?

Suggest you also post a screenshot of Disk Management showing your partitions.
Type
Disk Management
in Cortana's search bar
or
Windows key + R, type diskmgmt.msc

You can't delete those folders directly like that - they are protected.

Try
How to delete the Windows.old folder from Windows 10 - CNET
(I searched for
how to delete windows.old
)

Now you'll have to check if the others are deleted - if not you can delete them from a command prompt outside Windows (e.g. via SHIFT + click Restart and navigate thru the prompts. Drive letters will be different, so be careful.

 

Hi Dalchina,

Nope - I did exactly as I said in the OP. Tried three times to install Windows 10 onto a brand-new HDD from two different disk images (both obtained from Microsoft) and these failed in different places (like 74%, 40% etc). I had an image (again from Microsoft) on a USB stick which I tried and the install succeeded.

At each failed install I got a message similar to "Windows couldn't complete the setup process and no changes were made to your computer (or) these files will be removed" (can't remember the exact message), so I thought that any install debris would be removed.

It was only when the fourth attempt went through without a problem that I noticed that there were these folders from the failed installs.

Below is a screenshot of Disk management:

Will give this a shot, thank you

Regards

Art

 

Okay,

Just followed the link that you gave and the CNET article suggests that Disk Cleanup should show 'Previous Windows Installation(s)'.

As you can see from the image below, it doesn't.





Will try deletion outside of Windows. I have a DOS 6.22 CD which I will boot from and see if I can delete the folders from there.

Will report back later.

Regards

Art

 

@ArtDent
As I can also see from the screen shot, you didn't spot the bit in the article that says:

If you had, there would a second tab 'More options' and the 'clean up system files' button wouldn't still be showing. Without doing that you can't clean up 'Previous Windows Installation(s)' because they are classed as 'System files',

 

Would you mind telling me exactly what were, where from, those Microsoft images? I'd like to learn, a similar thing happened to me awhile back, with W8. Perhaps, together, we can ensure a probability that this type of failure will not happen to us again.

 

All the images in this thread are screenshots grabbed from our own computers. They are what was really happening on our PCs when we took the actions we were talking about.
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/6...dows-10-a.html

If you are asking how to run the disk clean-up, the easiest way is to type 'disk clean-up' in the Cortana Search box next to Start.

 

You can take ownership, grant authority and then delete. Code: takeown /f "C:\Windows.old.000" /r icacls "C:\Windows.old.000" /grant "%USERDOMAIN%\%USERNAME%"F) /t rmdir "C:\Windows.old.000" /s /q[/quote] Note leave "%USERDOMAIN%\%USERNAME%" as it is - don't try to substitute it with your name - the system will do that.

You need the /s switch to delete the contents as well as in the example above. You can check the options with rmdir /?

 

Yep - missed that!! *Doh

Trying that now...

@Ix07

Thanks, will try the 'Disk Cleanup' method first and it that doesn't work resort to DOS commands outside of Windows.

@Roland

If you mean the Windows 10 images I used...

They were downloaded directly from Microsoft. Two of them, (one of the disk images and the USB image) were created by the 'Media Creation Tool' and then burned/transferred to DVD/USB.

One of the images is labelled 'ESD' which I believe stands for 'Electronic Software Distribution'.

This link may be of some help. It has download links for all ESD files currently available through the Windows Update infrastructure.

Windows 10 ESD Database

Art

 

Thanks Art! Those were the images I was asking about. I was wondering if the process of downloading, writing to the hard-drive, creating the DVDs somewhere somehow had a few "hiccups" -- thus leading to the failures you mentioned in the opening.

 

Just for a FYI, CCleaner will also remove Old Windows Installation files.

 

@Roland

I guess they must have been corrupted somehow.

What is VERY ANNOYING is the fact that it takes several hours to download the .iso image (be it for a CD/DVD or a USB stick) when you run the Media Creation Tool - you burn the image and if you want another as backup (say you want a CD/DVD image and a USB image) you have to download the whole frickin' .iso image again! There seems to be no way to save the image. WHY, WHY, WHY???

I also don't understand why downloading the image takes hours! ISOs from other sources take minutes or less!
Still, that's Microsoft for you I guess!

Art

 

You can download the ISO from here Windows 10 ISO and then copy it to DVD, USB as you wish. You needn't use the Media Creation Tool.

If you do that (and want UK English) chose "English International" as "English" is US English.

It takes me just over 5 minutes to download but that depends on your internet speed. It is fairly big - 4.3GB for 64 bit or 3.3 GB for 32 bit .