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I am having HP Pavilion dv5 laptop which is having 250 GB of hard disk space. Recently I have installed Windows 7 x64 on the computer of mine. Previously there was windows Vista on the laptop of mine. I have seen that window.old folder is occupying almost 30 GB of hard disk space. Can anyone tell me whether it is safe to delete window.old folder on the computer of mine? Let me know opinion of your on this particular matter as soon as possible.
As far as I know windows.old file contains all the backup files of the previously done installation. According to my point of view it is safe to delete windows.old from the computer until and unless you have transferred all the necessary files properly from the backup file. One you have completed you need to use disk cleanup utility on the Windows 7 in order to remove that particular folder from the computer of yours.
You can use the following instruction to delete windows.old folder from the computer by using Disk Cleanup. It consists of the following steps.I am hoping that it will help you to fix the problem of yours.
- You have to launch the Disk Cleanup and choose the Windows 7 C: drive of the computer.
- Now simply click on the Clean up system files button. You have to click on Yes button is it is prompted by UAC.
- Now you have to click on the Previous Windows installations checkbox and click on the OK button.
- You have to click on the Delete files and wait till Disk Cleanup completes with the deleting of C:\Windows.old folder.
I am providing another way to delete Windows.old folder from the computer of yours.
- You have to launch Disk Management by entering diskmgmt.msc on the run button of the computer. You have to make note of all the drives available and size of the all the drive.
- Now launch the command prompt on the computer of yours and execute the following command on it. You have to copy paste the following command and press enter from the keyboard.
Code:RD /S /Q "D:\Windows.old"
- Here ‘D: ‘is the name of the partition on the computer of yours.
- Now exit the command prompt and reboot the computer of yours. Once computer gets reboot you have to see whether Windows.old folder is deleted or not.
Well looking at the situation I think Windows.old is having following functionality.
- It gives you an option to roll back to the previous version of Windows if there is failing of installation occur on the computer of yours. You can also move to previously installed OS if you did not like the Windows 7. Well I let you know that it is quite different from the system restore which we usually do.
- It also provides you an additional file location where you can backup all the files on it. Well this thing will not be helpful there is missing of the any file occurs.
I think I am really happy because I have successfully deleted Windows.old folder from the computer of mine. Why because I have decided that I will never return to the previously installed Windows that is Windows Vista on the computer of mine. Well after removing Windows.old from the computer of mine I have made quite large amount of hard disk space on the computer of mine. I am not having any issue with Windows.old so far.
Before you do anything you need to move towards documents/music/personal files/game save folders/ and need to take backup of the all the above folders. Also you can save some particular programs install time by simply browsing to Program Files folder and see which program can be run without reinstalling them. Once you have found the same you need to move the file to new program files and make shortcut on the desktop of them.