Clean up System Files including Windows.old

When you install Windows 10 or above on a PC and if it previously had Windows 7 or 8 installed or if you’re going to perform a custom installation of Windows 10 or going to upgrade after the installation is complete you will have a folder called Windows.old in your C:\ directory.

This also happens when you Repair, Upgrade, or do a Custom Install without a format or delete of partition before a fresh install.

If you’re performing a custom installation, as long as you don’t format that partition during the installation process of any of the previous versions of Windows, all your data and files from your previous version of Windows are stored in the C:\windows.old folder and can be used to restore.

This can be helpful if you want to recover data from that folder, but remember if you wipe, format or delete the partitions for a clean installation of Windows the folder windows.old will NOT be kept.

But windows.old folder takes more than 30 GB of space, here is a way to delete the folder.

At the bottom under Search Bar, search for Disk Cleanup and click on Open.

Select the drive which has windows.old folder and click on OK (in our case it is C drive).

Click on Clean up system files at the left bottom.

Select the same drive again and click on OK

Wait for a while it takes time to appear or scan the drive, just be patient.

Check all the boxes except the folders which have the Download name in them as it may delete what you have in the Downloads folder.
After checking all boxes, click on OK.