Windows 7 – How to Delete the Windows.old Folder after Upgrading from an Earlier Version of Windows

Reading time: 1 minutes

In the past few minutes, I was struggling with something so Microsoft (means stupid) that it even doesn’t deserve mentioning, but let me help those of you who are having the same problems like me.

As a happy Windows 7 customer, I followed Microsoft’s advice and installed my copy of Windows 7 using the “custom installation” option, which was great because it saved all of my user files and folders in a special folder called “Windows.old” on my C drive. Then, after copying everything I needed off there, I decided to get rid of the folder and as you may already have guessed, I held-down the SHIFT+DELL keys, expecting to delete that folder in an instant, but what was my surprise when nothing happened! The folder staid there ominously in its whole glory, taking a big blow on my nerves. I didn’t give up so easily and decided to tackle the problem differently. I typed “How to remove windows.old in Windows 7” in Google and got several forum topics with suggestions how to get rid of that folder. Then, armed with knowledge and desire to get this Windows.old crap out of my machine, I ran the Disc Cleaner Utility in Windows 7, waited for the programme to scan my hard drive for unnecessary files and from the dialog box that appeared, I clicked on “Clean system files” and waited once again and then, in the other window that opened, I selected to remove “previous Windows versions” and clicked ok. After a few seconds I eagerly went to my C drive to check the result and guess what? Nothing had happened! My Windows.old folder was still sitting there and if it was able to talk to me, probably it should have laughed at me, showing me a big fuck-off gesture off the screen. I was deeply irritated and decided to resort to one small, but powerful weapon – the Command prompt.
I went to Accessories, right-clicked Command Prompt and chose to run it as an administrator, then browsed to my C drive and typed the following line in haste:

RD /Q /S “Windows.old”

It worked and I was able to remove that annoying folder at the end. I hope this short; well not that short post will help you to remove your Windows.old folder as well.

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