How to manually delete the windows.old folder and then free disk space on Windows 10, 8, 7.
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Windows 10 is a constantly updated operating system, which launches new editions with new and improved features, one of the best solutions for both compatibility and performance.
When browsing through the different folders that our operating system has, especially in the C drive where the operating system is installed, we can find a series of unknown folders.
One of these is the Windows.old folder and is nothing more than a folder that contains the operating system files and configurations.
When we install Windows cleanly this folder does not exist, it will only be available when we update the system in a new edition.
Once we see this folder we can proceed to its cancellation.
Today we will see how to delete the Windows.old folder and then gain some space in the Windows C drive.
By default, when we update the current version of Windows 10 to a newer version, such as upgrading from Creators Update to October 2018, the system is responsible for creating a folder in the root of the C drive named Windows.old.
This folder contains the files and the configuration of the operating system and its inclusion in the C drive is part of the security measures of the system, in fact in case of problems during the upgrade, the initial state can be restored without problems.
This is because of the Windows.old folder can undo the new changes. In addition, if the update is completed successfully, the backup copy of the previous version will be available if we want to go back to the previous version of Windows 10 through the configuration utility.
Although this is a valid recovery and security option, the Windows.old folder can take up more than 10 GB of space, depending on the current configuration, which is a very large unused space on your hard drive and could be much more useful for other tasks.
If our upgrade to Windows 10 works as expected, we can delete this folder and recover that space on the hard drive and then let’s explain how to delete the Windows.old folder safely and completely in Windows 10.
Delete the Windows.old folder using Windows 10 storage
Windows 10 integrates a storage sensor that gives us the ability to manage all the parameters associated with the space in Windows 10 and then have options to remove the content that we no longer use but that takes up space on the disk.
To access this option, we will go to the Start / Settings menu.
Now let’s go to the “System” category and then we’ll go to the “Archiving” section
Here we click on the line “Change the way to free space automatically” and in the new window that opens, check the “Delete previous versions of Windows” box at the bottom and click on the “Clean now” button
Delete the Windows.old folder by using the temporary Windows 10 files
This is another of the options integrated in the configuration utility of Windows 10, to use this mode we go to Start / Configuration / System / Storage.
This time we click on the line “Free space now” and automatically Windows 10 will perform a complete analysis of the system to load each section that occupies space and view the dimensions used, in which we will see aspects such as downloads, temporary files, and optimization, the point that we are interested in the line “Previous installations of Windows“.
Once the analysis is finished, we must activate that box and click on the “Remove file” button to complete the operation.
Delete the Windows.old folder using the properties of the Windows 10 drive
For this option we have two methods:
- In the search box, look for and select the “Free disk space” option.
- Go to the Windows explorer file, right click on the C drive and select the “free space” option.
In the new window, click on the “Clean System Files” button located at the bottom to start a system scan.
After this scan, you will see a window where we have to check the box “Previous installations of Windows“.
We can see the size that currently occupies in the system and click OK to start the removal process. We click on “Delete file” to proceed with the activity.
Windows.old is a folder that can be useful in the first 10-15 days of use of the system, where we really test if it works without errors, but after this time we can delete it to avoid occupying additional space on the hard disk.
