How to remove windows.old folder after Windows 7 installation ?

So, like millions and millions of Microsoft fans I decided to download and install Windows 7 RC1 (Build 7100) on my laptop this past week. Although, it took a little longer than I expected, the initial signs from what I see look really really really good. But more about my experiments and findings of Windows 7 later. This post is all about this issue I saw after installing Windows 7 on my laptop running Windows XP.

As suggested on the site I did do a clean install of Windows RC1, but was surprised to see a windows.old folder lingering around on my C:\ along with the routine Windows folder I expected to see. Now this wouldn't be so much an issue if I had more disk space to spare, but since I am running an almost 4 year old laptop (bought this one Oct 05) with 1 GB RAM and 60 Gig hard disk space, having a supposedly useless windows.old folder with 16 GB of hard space on it lying around seemed too much of a loss to me.

So, like most others who installed Windows 7 did, I started looking up info about this online and found some really interesting advice.

So this is how I went about deleting my windows.old folder and getting back a good 16 Gigs of hard disk space.

Go to start menu. Left click on All Programs.


Go to accessories --> System Tools


From System tools folder, go to Disk Cleanup.


Select the root drive where the windows.old folder is located as the drive to be cleaned up from the Disk Cleanup start dialog box. I chose C:\ since that was the drive that had the windows.old folder in it.

From the disk cleanup box, which is very similar to what Microsoft had in XP and as far as I remember Vista, click on "Clean Up System files". Doing this should list "Clean up older installation of Windows" as a cleanup option in the files list in the top windows.



Hit OK, and you should be good to go.


After I was done with the disk cleanup process, Volla, I had an extra 16 Gigs of hard drive space.