Surely you have a folder on your computer called Windows.old, which can occupy several GB and is not very useful in most cases. We explain what Windows.old is and how you can delete this folder to free up space on your hard drive.
What is Windows.old
Windows.old is a folder that usually appears at the root of the hard drive where you have the operating system installed. This folder is usually generated when a large Windows 10 update is installed , and also if you have updated from a previous version, such as Windows 8.
This folder was created with the arrival of Windows Vista, inside there are data, files and settings from the previous installation of Windows. The purpose of this folder is that the user can quickly return to the previous version of the operating system , something that does not make sense if the new version installed works well. You can even copy user data and settings from the Windows.old folder to the new installation.
Windows.old can occupy almost 20 GB , a very significant amount of space, even more so in the era of SSDs, which tend to have much more limited capacities than mechanical hard drives.
How to delete Windows.old correctly
Windows.old cannot be erased as you would other folders, it is necessary to resort to the Windows 10 disk cleaning tool .
After running the Windows 10 space cleaner, you will have to do a scan of the Windows files, for this use the option " Clean the system files ".
This will show you all the files that can be removed, including the content of Windows.old. Typically this folder is represented as " Previous Windows Installations ". All you have to do is check this option and click " OK " to proceed with deleting the files.
This should have removed all the contents of the Windows.old folder and you will recover a few GB of space on your hard drive. If you liked the post, you can share it on social networks so that it can help more users.