Windows 10: Disk cleanup left the Windows.old folder

Title. I can't get rid of it. It has survived me doing the disk cleanup twice now as well as reboots (figured it was just stuck visually in the file manager). How can I get rid of it.

:)

 

Should I clean out my "Legacy system Windows.Old files"?

Hi,

Your personal files are temporarily saved to the Windows.old folder. Deleting the Windows.old folder can’t be undone. If you delete the
Windows.old folder, you wont be able to go back to Previous operating system.

For more information about Windows.old folder, you may refer to this link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/how-remove-windows-old-folder

Note: This applies to Windows 10 as well.

If you want to delete the Windows.old folder, you can perform disk cleanup.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/...nup#delete-files-using-disk-cleanup=windows-8

Note: This applies to Windows 10 as well.

Hope this is useful.

 

Windows.old still appear after disk cleanup

Thank you! This did finally get rid of the Windows.old folder. Initially, I used Disk Cleanup and it deleted the old version, but it left an empty folder behind. Even though it was showing as zero in size and not taking up disk space, it annoyed me knowing
it was there.

Thanks again!!

 

If you are using the disk cleanup tool in Windows, you have to go to the advanced options and tell it to clean system files and then choose old windows installations. If you use the cleaner in CCleaner and tell it to delete old installations that works too. That option in CCleaner seems to only show when there is a windows.old folder since it is now not present

 

I'll try ccleaner. Already did the system files with disk cleanup a few times.

 

CCleaner doesn't even report that it exists. It's still sitting there in C:\ though. I've changed it to Hidden so it doesn't bother me for the time being. Would like to dump it though. There are no files, just a couple folders.

C:\Windows.old\Windows\System32\DriverStore folder is the hold up. It keeps telling me I need administrator to delete it. I've tried manually removing with an elevated command prompt. Still no dice.

 

Try cleammgr in extended mode. Open Admin command prompt. Copy and paste the line below and run, check mark everything except Setup Log files. It will ask you for confirmation to delete, answer YES.
%SystemRoot%\System32\Cmd.exe /c Cleanmgr /sageset:35 & Cleanmgr /sagerun:35

 

I'm never comfortable putting things into the command line without understanding them. However I did run that command and it popped up a window. But old installations wasn't even an option to select. I finally just booted a live Lubuntu usb I had and removed it from inside of linux.

For all it's faults, linux makes some things 100 times easier sometimes. Thanks for the suggestions. Solved now.

 

After Disk Cleanup, there shouldn't be anything in the folder(s),
you could have Taken Ownership of it and deleted it.