Windows .old empty but 13 gigs size?

[chinchymcchilla]

Hey everyone,

I recently got stuck in a loop where when I tried to boot, windows would attempt to "automatically repair", would fail, and then restart, forever.

I tried a bunch of things but eventually had to reinstall Windows 8.

I'm trying to see if I can recover files from the old install, but the Windows.old folder appears to be empty even though I have clicked view hidden files, as well as view operating system files... but it has 13 gigs of size.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

 

[chinchymcchilla]

To clarify, there are (or should be) documents in windows.old that I need to retrieve, and currently I can't see them. Any help would be extremely useful