If you recently upgraded to the new version of Windows 10, you can use this guide to free up hard drive space by deleting the Windows.old folder which only wastes disk space.
When you update your computer to a new version of Windows 10; or you are installing a previous version, the installation process saves a copy of the previous version in the “Windows.old” folder
This is part of the added security in case the update process goes wrong. If the installation fails for some reason, the system can use the Windows.old folder to restore the previous version.
Also, if the update is successful, the backup will be kept to allow us to revert to the previous version if there is a problem with the new version.
Although this feature is quite useful, if your computer is working fine after the update, you have also used it for a while with your usual programs and applications; and that didn’t give you any problems, you can safely delete the Windows.old folder to free up several gigabytes of space.
In this Windows 10 guide, we will walk you through the different ways to delete the Windows.old folder to free up space on your disk.
How to delete the Windows.old folder using Disk Cleanup.
To delete the Windows.old folder with the Disk Cleanup tool, follow these steps:
- Open the File browser.
- Click on This team.
- In the “Devices and Drives” selection, right-click on the drive with the installation of Windows 10 (this is usually the drive VS) and select the option Properties.
- In the “General” tab, click on the button Free up space.
- Click on the button Clean up system files.
- Check the option Previous Windows installation.
- So (optional) uncheck all options except “Previous Windows installation“If you just want to delete the Windows.old folder to free up some space.”
IMPORTANT: as of the October 2018 update; added an option to delete all the contents of the Downloads folder. If you have important files in this folder, be sure to turn it off.
- Click on the button Accept.
- Click on the button Delete files to confirm delete them.
- Click on the button YES to confirm the warning.