Windows.Old Files... Can they be deleted?

[jrrdmchls]

I recently threw together a decent rig from a bunch of old parts. Installed vista upgraded to windows 7 home premium and am planning on going on to Win10 soon. My question is can i delete the window.old files from my hard drive?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes. You have to use Disk Cleanup to do this. You can't just 'delete' it.

 

[johnbl]

Run cleanmgr.exe

 

[jrrdmchls]

Run cleanmgr.exe

Thanks I'll try this when i get home!

 

[jrrdmchls]

So instead of cleaning up my windows install before I upgraded to 10. I did the upgrade and ran cleanmgr.exe. However, there is still a Windows.old file with lots of fun stuff inside. I cannot just delete the folder because it is protected. I have Windows 10, AVG, CPU-z and Chrome installed and my Hard drive is reporting that i have over 50 gigs with of space being used.... This seems quite excessive for what I have installed. Is this normal or not?

 

[USAFRet]

So instead of cleaning up my windows install before I upgraded to 10. I did the upgrade and ran cleanmgr.exe. However, there is still a Windows.old file with lots of fun stuff inside. I cannot just delete the folder because it is protected. I have Windows 10, AVG, CPU-z and Chrome installed and my Hard drive is reporting that i have over 50 gigs with of space being used.... This seems quite excessive for what I have installed. Is this normal or not?

Disk Cleanup, Remove System Files. (or words to that effect)

 

[jrrdmchls]

So instead of cleaning up my windows install before I upgraded to 10. I did the upgrade and ran cleanmgr.exe. However, there is still a Windows.old file with lots of fun stuff inside. I cannot just delete the folder because it is protected. I have Windows 10, AVG, CPU-z and Chrome installed and my Hard drive is reporting that i have over 50 gigs with of space being used.... This seems quite excessive for what I have installed. Is this normal or not?

Disk Cleanup, Remove System Files. (or words to that effect)

Ok, so found the remove system files linky on the disk cleanup. Its telling me that its protected and wont continue. Do i need to do this in "safe" mode?

 

[USAFRet]

So instead of cleaning up my windows install before I upgraded to 10. I did the upgrade and ran cleanmgr.exe. However, there is still a Windows.old file with lots of fun stuff inside. I cannot just delete the folder because it is protected. I have Windows 10, AVG, CPU-z and Chrome installed and my Hard drive is reporting that i have over 50 gigs with of space being used.... This seems quite excessive for what I have installed. Is this normal or not?

Disk Cleanup, Remove System Files. (or words to that effect)

Ok, so found the remove system files linky on the disk cleanup. Its telling me that its protected and wont continue. Do i need to do this in "safe" mode?

No, it should not require safe mode. It will require an admin account password.

 

[jrrdmchls]

So instead of cleaning up my windows install before I upgraded to 10. I did the upgrade and ran cleanmgr.exe. However, there is still a Windows.old file with lots of fun stuff inside. I cannot just delete the folder because it is protected. I have Windows 10, AVG, CPU-z and Chrome installed and my Hard drive is reporting that i have over 50 gigs with of space being used.... This seems quite excessive for what I have installed. Is this normal or not?

Disk Cleanup, Remove System Files. (or words to that effect)

Ok, so found the remove system files linky on the disk cleanup. Its telling me that its protected and wont continue. Do i need to do this in "safe" mode?

No, it should not require safe mode. It will require an admin account password.

...And if i just bypassed password protecting this machine during setup, I will need to setup an admin I suppose?

 

[USAFRet]

...And if i just bypassed password protecting this machine during setup, I will need to setup an admin I suppose?

Not sure on this.

 

[jrrdmchls]

...And if i just bypassed password protecting this machine during setup, I will need to setup an admin I suppose?

Not sure on this.

OK got it figured out. Because I didn't create a password when I installed Win10. It wouldn't let me delete the files. So to remedy this I created a password for the default user which happens to be the Admin. Went back and ran disk cleanup and i was able to clean out almost 30 gigs with of old files. Thanks for the help!