Resolved After deleting Windows 7, why are windows.old and $Windows.~BT still present?

I had a successful upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 in mid May. I deleted Windows 7 following the recommended procedure Disk Cleanup > Clean up system files > checked box Previous Windows Installations etc etc etc. My Windows 7 was removed and my disk free space increased by about 30GB.

My question is, why are the windows.old and $Windows.~BT folders still there? windows.old only has a couple of empty subfolders under it. I should be able to just delete that. But $Windows.~BT, which I thought is where Windows 10 is downloaded, still has a variety of subfolders with content. Can I just delete that too?

Thanks,
msilvers50

 

If you are sure you do not want to roll back to W7, yes, you can delete both. Not sure why it is still there after you ran Disk Cleanup. It may have something to do with the 30 day grace period which would not be up yet since you upgraded in "mid" May.

Note a trick I often use if not sure it is safe to delete a folder or file is to simply rename them and see if anything breaks. I generally just append "-delete-6-5-16" (or whatever today's date is) to the end of the file or folder name. So for example, I would rename $Windows.~BT to $Windows.~BT-delete-6-5-16 and see what happens. By adding the word "delete" and the date, I don't have worry about remembering the original file/folder name or remember how long it has been since renaming. Don't use slashes in the date to avoid problems with sub-folders.

Then in a few days or weeks (or often months when I stumble on the file or folder again), I can simply look at the date and easily realize if renaming caused any problems. If not, I delete. If problems occur, I simply delete my appendage ... err ... I mean I rename the file back and be good to go!

 

Thanks. I followed your temporary file rename suggestion, had no problems and after about a week I deleted the folders.

 

Great. Glad you got it sorted out and thanks for posting your follow up.