In today’s article we are going to see how to delete the Windows.old folder in Windows 10 by CMD in a fairly simple way and above all in a few steps.
The Windows.old folder contains an “old” version of the operating system. It is present in case an update or anything within the operating system fails.
However, it is not really necessary and can take up a lot of storage space, and we would have to resort to freeing up space on the hard drive of the Windows PC since you could use it for other things.
Do you want to learn how to delete Windows.old folder in Windows 10 by CMD? We are going to show you how to do it by following two methods: the first is through the command console and the second through the Windows 10 graphical interface.
How to delete Windows.old folder in Windows 10 by CMD
We are going to delete the Windows.old folder by using the command prompt. This is a very simple process to carry out, just as PowerShell is completely removed or uninstalled or the $SysReset folder is deleted and what we can do by following the steps that I will leave you a little further down.
- For this, the first thing you should do is open “Command Prompt” press “start” and then type “cmd”.
- Now you will have to right click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as administrator”.
- A dark window will open. In it we will have to add the following lines, you can copy and paste them. After pasting each of them you must press “Enter” remember that you must paste each of these commands separately: takeown /F c:Windows.old* /R /A, cacls c:Windows.old*. * /T /grant administrators:F, rmdir /S /Q c:Windows.old
If after entering any of these commands it asks you Are you sure? So we are going to have to press the letter S and then enter to confirm. In this way you will be able to eliminate all traces of the Windows.old folder without any problems.
What are these commands for? The one we add first is to collect information about the ownership of the folder and all the content that it has to the device manager.
The second of these is to gain ownership of the folder in question and everything in it. And the last of these commands is used precisely to delete the entire folder, including the content it has inside.
It is essential to go step by step, since without the previous commands we will not be able to delete the folder because it is used by the same operating system. If we tried to remove it with the last command without executing the previous two, we would simply be denied access to it.
How to delete Windows.old folder in Windows 10
If you don’t want to use the command prompt and prefer to remove Windows.old from a graphical interface, then we can do it by following these steps:
- First click on “start” and then on the gear icon on the left side.
- Next, we enter the Windows configuration menu where you will have to enter the “System” section.
- After this we will have to click where it says “Storage” in the left sidebar of the screen.
- Here you will have to press on the hard drive that has Windows installed, it is usually C.
- Then press where it says “Temporary files”.
- All the files that you see in this section can be eliminated and will not generate any kind of problem on your computer.
- Check the “Previous version of Windows” option and in this way we make sure that we will delete Windows.old.
- To finish, you simply have to click on “Remove files” and the process will start, it may take a while depending on the size of all the files you are going to delete.
After carrying out this process, it is best to restart the computer so that the changes are applied and you notice the space that you now have available to use as you wish.
Remember that if you have any kind of doubt about how to delete the Windows folder from the command prompt or CMD you can leave it in the comment box that you can find a little further down and we will be happy to help you.
