clearing Windows.old breaks windows?

[WindHydra]

It appears that clearing the windows.old folder in Windows 10 could break the system if you have performed "reset this PC" before.

 

After running "reset this PC", the windows.old folder cannot be deleted (unlike when upgrading from windows 7), probably due to linked files? I tried deleting the folder manually (it worked when it was upgraded from Windows 7) but it didn't work. After restart, CCleaner tried to clear windows.old, but only managed to delete ~5mb of files out of almost 1gb, then the computer won't boot after restart. Can anyone confirm this?

[mta]

any time I've had to delete windows.old (and that's been many times since Windows 10 has been available) I've had no issues, but as you say, none of those times have been after the pc was 'reset'.

 

but to help with its removal, have your tried cleanmgr (run as admin) ?

this is what I now use, having initially used Unlocker to remove windows.old, which it does, but it takes forever.

[WindHydra]

After Win7 upgrade the windows.old folder deletes fine, both manually or with Disk Cleanup (tried on 2 computers).

Yes I tried cleanmgr after reset, but it only managed to partially clear the folder (~1GB left behind). CCleaner only managed to removed an additional 5mb according to ccleaner summary, but the computer became unbootable afterwards. There might be system files in the folder which shouldn't be touched.

[Bung]

You know, just to open up an old thread and why not? But I used CCleaner to remove Windows.old and when I rebooted the computer, it wouldn't. That always brings about great relief. So this time around, I came that close to doing it again, not having realized why my computer wouldn't reboot after that event. Now I'm beginning to wonder, was it that? But then again, I also removed the Recovery folder and though nothing was in it, I believe that might have caused the computer not to reboot. Even though there is zero showing in there, sometimes Windows has that neat little trick of having something there that we cannot see.

But I've tried removing it with Disk Cleanup twice, unchecking everything else in there and leaving only "Previous Windows Installation" and there is no way that Folder is going to be removed. But I do notice that when I click on Properties, it shows zero as to anything being in those folders now. But Disk Cleanup is still showing 5.52 MB of something in there. I'm wondering if I should just leave that there but then again, doesn't Windows remove that in 30 days? Two other computers and the Disk Cleaner simply removed Windows old