I hate wasting hard drive space. Even if I have plenty to spare I still run a cleanup utility at least once a week. One big space hog is the Windows.old folder in Windows 10. It is created either when you upgraded from a previous version or when you performed the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. If you want to properly remove the Windows.old folder in Windows 10 for free up some of your own disk, here’s how to do it.
A couple of things before we begin. The Windows.old folder contains your previous version of Windows so don’t delete it if there is the remotest chance you might want to roll back. Give it a week or so after an upgrade before deleting just to make sure everything works. Second, Windows will automatically delete the folder after a month anyway, so unless you don’t want to wait you don’t actually need to do anything.
Remove the Windows.old folder in Windows 10
If you can’t wait and are ready to commit to your current version of Windows, do this.
1. Type or paste ‘cleanup’ into the Search Windows box.
2. Click ‘Clean up system files’.
3. Select ‘Previous Windows installation(s)’ and click OK.
4. Allow the process to complete.
As you can see in the image, my Windows.old folder was taking up just over 17GB which I was able to reclaim. Considering that was just after the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, that’s a lot of space to waste!
More Windows 10 tricks you might like:
How to Enable or Disable Built-in Elevated Administrator Account in Windows 10
How to uninstall and reinstall Windows 10 built-in apps
How to prevent users from installing software in Windows 10
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