HackingUniversity - Hacks . Tricks . How-To's

12 February 2016

How to Delete Windows.old Directory in Windows OS

Your windows might be updated recently, if you are using Windows 10 like i am then recent update was big and it took several minutes to even install the whole update in my windows and to my surprise it created another windows directory with another name windows.old. That was strange as maximum things recovered but few softwares were removed like CCleaner, i don’t know why but it happened and i have to install it again.

But now the point over here is to remove that BIG fat directory that is actually easily but a lot of space, mine was approx. 13.5 GB so that it huge isn’t it.

I tried removing it by right clicking on it and choosing Delete Windows Directory, but that did not work, i do not know why but yes it did not. So i made a search on google and i got a simple solution to this problem.

Removing Windows.old Directory from Windows

Well the solution was simple and i have created a video and even wrote a tutorial below to show you how it actually works.

  1. Just open up Disk Cleanup utility.
  2. You can do so by searching for Disk Cleanup and opening it up.
  3. Now choose your Windows Installation drive, obviously its going to be C:

    disk cleanup system files
  4. It will scan for sometime then show you the results, but now you need to click on “Clean up System Files”
  5. Now it will search once again, now wait for the files to load and just select the option “Previous Windows Installation”
  6. Yes, thats the option you need to choose, now press OK and it will ask you really want to delete that folder, press Yes and thats it, your folder and all its files will be deleted.

Now your whole bunch of space will be saved and you can easily see the difference, that another bluky folder will be vanished away. I hope this tutorial will work for you and you will be able to save a good amount of space with it.