Problem

Recently I got an update for Windows 10 on my laptop. I have updated the running windows 10 on my laptop. Before the update, there was 84 GB of space was available on my laptop hard disk but after the update, I found that there were only 52 GB of space was available on my laptop hard disk, as shown below in screenshots.

 

Reason

When I checked my laptop hard disk, I found that there was a folder under C drive Windows.old and the size of this folder was around 43 GB. This folder Windows.old was created by the windows itself during the update/upgrade process. If you want to restore your windows at a previous stage as it was before the update/upgrade then you will need this folder otherwise you may delete this folder.

I don’t need to restore my windows 10 at its previous stage in the future. But I need to increase the free space on my laptop so I am going to remove/delete this Windows.old folder. Deletion of Windows.old will not affect the running version of Windows 10.

Solution

Follow the steps given below to remove/delete the Windows.old folder.

• Clean in Windows search field ‘Type here to search’ and type Cleanup then click on Disk Cleanup to open it.
  

  Search Disk Cleanup Utility in Windows 10

• Click on the Clean up system files button.
  

  Disk Cleanup for Local Disk in Windows 10

• It will take a while to scan the files.
  

  Disk Cleanup Scanning files

• Scroll down the list until you see the Previous Windows installation(s)
  

  Disk Cleanup Previous Windows installation(s)

• Check the check-box against Previous Windows installation(s) and click on the OK button. Click on the Delete Files button to delete these files permanently.
• Disk Cleanup utility will run and clean the unnecessary files.
• Now, Windows.old folder has been removed/deleted as shown below.
  

  Windows.old folder removed from Windows 10

• Now, free space on my laptop has been increased from 52 GB to 84 GB.
  

  Disk Size after removal of Windows.old folder from Windows 10

Last Updated: August 02, 2019