Windows 10: Windows 10: Removal of old (old, old) Windows installation

I have followed a few threads on manual removal of the Windows.old folder after automatic methods do not work, and none that I have seen has addressed the particular version of the problem I am seeing, which is that there appears to be a hard link embedded in this folder, maybe(?)

When the cust brought the computer to me it was running 1803 and had two previous installations, Windows.old and WIndows.old (1). Using the traditional channel (Explorer - C: properties - Disk cleanup - Clean up system files) successfully removed Windows.old but the '(1)' version remains stubbornly in place. Or at least, its folder, anyway.

It's not taking up space, as far as I can tell, but I I'm OCD and don't like things that shouldn't be there. The folder contains only one sub-folder, users, which in turn has one sub-folder, the name of the user. At this point it gets interesting. There is a hidden folder here, AppData, which is the root of a series of sub-sub-sub-etc folders that looks like this:


C:\Windows.old(1)\ Users\Mandy\ AppData\ Local\ Microsoft\ Windows\ Temporary Internet Files\ Virtualized\ C\ Users\ Mandy\ AppData\ Roaming\ Dropbox\ shellext


[I inserted spaces to allow the line to wrap more naturally, but the path is otherwise exactly as I copy-pasted it from Explorer]. The folder "Local" is not hidden, but everything from there down ("Microsoft" to "Roaming") is hidden, then DropBox and Shellext aren't.

Thinking I'd be clever and delete these folders from the bottom up, attempting to "rd shellext" in a command prompt gives the error message "The system cannot find the file specified". In Explorer I get


"Item not found/Could not find this item/This is no longer located in/[full detail of the file path]/Verify the item's location and try again/[Try Again] [Cancel]"


One of the suggested fixes in another thread was to use



TAKEOWN /f Windows.old(1) /a /r

from the C:\> prompt. This reported a string of successes for each of the folders down the tree, like:


SUCCESS: The file (or folder): "C:\windows.old(1)\" now owned by the administrators group.


[...] etc, until:


SUCCESS: The file (or folder): "C:\windows.old(1)\Users\Mandy\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Virtualized\C\Users\Mandy\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox" now owned by the administrators group.



INFO: The system cannot find the file specified. ( "C:\windows.old(1)\Users\Mandy\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Virtualized\C\Users\Mandy\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\shellext " )


The properties of ShellExt are unexciting. Its security settings are unconventional though:


[Red "X"] The requested security information is either unavailable or can't be displayed


Third party utility FilExile when I attempt to delete ShellExt says "The target is not a valid file or directory" and hangs, requiring closing before I can use it again.

I've updated to 1809 and run 2 more rounds of Windows Updates to the point of nothing more to do, and deleted the new Windows.old using Settings - Storage - Free up disk space, all with no status change on this folder.

sfc /scannow gives the PC a clean bill.

Anything anyone can think of to track where or what this/these folder/s "really" is/are, or what the real problem is, and more importantly how to get rid of them?

:)

 

old windows

Hi I have just reset my daughters laptop to factory settings and updated it to windows 8.1 on the hard drive I have a windows folder and an old windows folder can I get rid of the old windows folder and how would I get rid of it, as I am not used to win 8.

 

Replacing old hard drive, need way to copy Windows installation across

Hey Guys,
What would be the best way of copying/imaging the entire contents of an old system drive over to a replacement hard disk for the same machine? I need to copy the Windows installations and all other data to the new drive, and then format the old drive to use as a backup.

Any suggestions? *Smile

 

Unable to remove old administrator account.

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

I understand that you want to delete one of the old administrator accounts from your computer. If you want to save the data from the old Administrator account, I would suggest you to copy the data from the old user account from
C: Users\<Old User Account> and move it to your backup drive or folder in a different location, before deleting the account.

I would also like to know what exactly happens when you try to remove the old Administrator account from your PC.

To delete an Administrator account from your PC, you will have to login to another user account with
Administrator access as User Accounts cannot be deleted through a Standard account.

Once you have logged into your new Administrator account, you can follow the steps mentioned below to remove the old Administrator account from your PC. To do this, by

1. Login to the new Admin User Account that you want to keep.
2. Tap on 'Windows + I' on the keyboard.
3. Click on 'Accounts'.
4. Now click on 'Family & other users'.
5. Select the old Administrator account from the list.
6. Click on 'Remove'.

Let us know if you face any issues, and we will certainly assist you further.

Hope it helps.

Sandeep Kumar M

Microsoft Community – Moderator