How can we delete the folder manually Windows.old in Windows 10

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Update:

After upgrading to the operating system, the folder appears on the system partition Windows.old in which they are stored folders and files of the old operating system from your PC / laptop.

In most cases this folder is not used. Windows.old help his user returns to the old version of the operating system if he wants this in time. From our experience, this happens in very few situations, and when a user decides to do one downgrade, it does with a "clean" reinstallation of the operating system.

Normally, this folder will be automatically deleted by Windows after a period of time, but until then, he does nothing but to occupy a considerable space on the disk. And if we have one SSD whose space is quite limited, then maintaining the folder Windows.old is not a good idea.

Being associated as a SYSTEM, its manual deletion is impossible. As long as it does not belong to any user on the operating system, it cannot be deleted by simply selecting and pressing the key "Delete". So we need to assign them special permissions then we can delete it manually. Otherwise we will hit the message "Folder Access Denied".

How can we delete the folder manually Windows.old

First of all, we're opening Command Prompt with administrator rights. Press the keys Win + R, and the dialog box "Run .." we type "cmd.exe". Hold down the Shift and Ctrl keys, then press Enter.
Another option is to open it from the "Start Menu". Tastam “Command", Select" Command Prompt ", right-click andRun as administrator... ".
After this first step, we execute the following command lines in Command Prompt:

takeown /F c:\Windows.old\* /R /A /D Y
cacls c:\Windows.old\*.* /T /grant administrators:F
rmdir /S /Q c:\Windows.old

Once you run the last command line, the folder Windows.old will be completely deleted. In the scenario where you have the folder Windows.old in a partition other than "C: \", change the partition letter in the lines above.

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9 thoughts on "How can we manually delete the folder Windows.old in Windows 10 "

  1. Hello,
    I tried to manually delete the old one windows, but I first tried other options and renamed the directories and changed attributes and now they don't let me delete. How can I still get rid of the old windows?

    Reply
    • Right-click on the system partition and use "disk cleanup". Select there to scan your system files as well. At the end of the scanning process, select to delete the old version of Windows.
      It is still good to know what version of Windows use.

      Reply
      • I tried and did not see winold as system files, finds me about 200mb files, temp, deleted and others, and the winold directory has 6Gb and does not appear to check it out.
        use Windows 10.

        Size 8,59 GB (9.227.979.103 bytes)
        Size on disk 5,49 GB (5.896.556.544 bytes)
        Contains 74.716 Files, 15.294 Folders

        Reply
        • Try the first method, the one in the tutorial. The idea is to launch Command Prompt with administrator rights and run a "takeown" on the folder you want to delete.
          Then you can run "rmdir / s / qc: \Windows.old (or as the folder is now called).

          Reply
          • Eventually it worked with those commands. I think in the first phase I did not open Command Prompt with administrator rights for this did not work. Thank you for the help.

  2. Složku Window.old jsem odstranil pomocí moderní nastavení- systém-úložiště - změní uvolněnní disku, a tady jsem zaškrtnul odstranit předchozí windows a spustil vyčistit nyní, běželo asi 20 muinut potom to skončily, jenže slogan Windows.old zůstala na disku s prázdnými souborama! Už mě to že se tyto složky nemůžu zbavit! Mom taky windows 10!

    Reply
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