Post Win10 upgrade - cleanup

When is it safe to delete the windows.old directory, which now has
17.9GB data and some 155,000 files?

The Win 10 2004 version seems to be behaving fine for the last 2 days.

occam wrote:

When is it safe to delete the windows.old directory, which now has
17.9GB data and some 155,000 files?

The Win 10 2004 version seems to be behaving fine for the last 2 days.

If you leave it a month, it'll go by itself ...

On 05/06/2020 10:35, Andy Burns wrote:
occam wrote:

When is it safe to delete the windows.old directory, which now has
17.9GB data and some 155,000 files?

The Win 10 2004 version seems to be behaving fine for the last 2 days.

If you leave it a month, it'll go by itself ...


Thanks. By what mechanism will that happen? Is it a default setting
somewhere I have not noticed?

occam wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

If you leave it a month, it'll go by itself ...

Thanks. By what mechanism will that happen? Is it a default setting
somewhere I have not noticed?

If you were going to delete it manually, the clean way is to use the
disk cleanup wizard, not sure if the automatic method is a task
scheduler calling the same wizard, or if it just nukes the windows.old
folder directly.

occam wrote:
When is it safe to delete the windows.old directory, which now has
17.9GB data and some 155,000 files?

The Win 10 2004 version seems to be behaving fine for the last 2 days.

Since it would have deleted in ten days, all by itself, you really
cannot hold the contents of "Windows.old" for more than ten days anyway.

The interval it stays around, is a Microsoft design decision. At
one time, the interval for the existence of Windows.old was longer.
Then it got reduced to ten days.

The ten days is "just an estimate".

Cleanmgr can be used to remove the Windows.old sooner than that.
If you have your Search Indexer set up to index the entire disk,
then for those situations, I delete Windows.old right away.

Do *not* throw Windows.old in the Trash!!!
This will not work, and it irritates the monkeys.
There are one or two directories that defy removal
if you do it that way.

*******

Upgrades should be handled using full disk backups, not Windows.old.

I can erase Windows.old, because the disk the OS is on was
fully backed up before doing it (that took a while too).
If I want to revert, I can do it in less than ten minutes,
using a drag and drop restore in Macrium. The reason for
backing up the entire multi-boot disk, is in case an
accident happens, and the installer deletes the entire disk.

On my test setup here, doing 2004 install, caused another
System Reserved partition to appear. One System Reserved
would belong to the old OS (and identified by GUID presumably).
The new System Reserved is associated with the new OS. Microsoft
seems to have no automated mechanism to clean this up. The
Linux multiboot on my test setup, was not affected, because all
the FSTAB tables are done using BLKIDs, and even if Microsoft
renumbers the partition numbers, it doesn't blow up Linux :-)

If you were a traditionalist, and assigned materials using
identifiers like /dev/sda23 , then Linux would blow up after
Windows did its thing. Windows could have placed System Reserved
down at the end of the disk and used a partition number clear
of all the rest. But noooo... that's too easy, and instead
it's more fun to **** up the partition numbers as part of
an upgrade. There was *plenty* of room at the end of the disk
for them to do that. On purpose, I leave space just for idiot
issues like this.

They didn't break anything, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

The other style of carpet bombing, is when a Windows installer
overwrites GRUB. Windows 10 did not do that. It would be
all too easy to trample over what was there already.
My UEFI setup finds two boot loaders, and the ESP folder
for either one will kick off a boot.

Paul

On 6/5/20 4:23 AM, this is what occam wrote:
When is it safe to delete the windows.old directory, which now has
17.9GB data and some 155,000 files?

The Win 10 2004 version seems to be behaving fine for the last 2 days.

diskmgr or
Click the start button Settings-System-Storage.
click on temp files. It will scan and then give you check boxes for what you want to delete. One is windows update files.

Al

On 6/5/2020 1:23 AM, occam wrote:
When is it safe to delete the windows.old directory, which now has
17.9GB data and some 155,000 files?

The Win 10 2004 version seems to be behaving fine for the last 2 days.




It's entirely up to you. Whenever you feel there's no possibility you
will want to go back to the old version.

But as far as I'm concerned, it's foolhardy to delete it unless you
badly need its disk space.


--
Ken

On 6/5/2020 3:50 AM, Andy Burns wrote:
occam wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

If you leave it a month, it'll go by itself ...

Thanks. By what mechanism will that happen? Is it a default setting
somewhere I have not noticed?

If you were going to delete it manually, the clean way is to use the
disk cleanup wizard, not sure if the automatic method is a task
scheduler calling the same wizard, or if it just nukes the windows.old
folder directly.






Correct.
Must use the wizard and have it look for system files.

It will initially disappear for maybe ten minutes while it searches.


The old installation will not just go away on it's own nor is it
possible to manually delete from within Windows

Andy Burns wrote:

occam wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

If you leave it a month, it'll go by itself ...

Thanks. By what mechanism will that happen? Is it a default setting
somewhere I have not noticed?

If you were going to delete it manually, the clean way is to use the
disk cleanup wizard, not sure if the automatic method is a task
scheduler calling the same wizard, or if it just nukes the windows.old
folder directly.

Task Scheduler
\__ Task Scheduler Library
\__ Microsoft
\__ Windows
\__ DiskCleanup

runs:

%windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe /autoclean /d %systemdrive%

^^^^^^^^^^^^___ That's the Disk Cleanup wizard.

Custom event (no schedule defined). Description says it runs when
running low on free disk space.

The windows.old (and Windows10Upgrade) folder should disappear after 30
days (after performing an upgrade install of Windows 10) or after 10
days for feature updates (since Windows 10 provides a 10-day rollback
option).

As I recall, Windows Update Cleanup (or Previous Windows Installations)
showed up in the cleanmgr wizard (you might have to click on "system
files" button, run cleanmgr.exe with admin privileges), but only if
there is something to cleanup. Since I don't have any old updates to
clean out, the option is not shown.

Windows updates are not stored under window.old, except for feature
updates, so you can rollback to the prior build. Normal updates are
stored under the WinSxS folder even when superseded by a later update.
After running the Disk Cleanup wizard, you may be unable to rollback
some updates, especially to get back to a superseded update.

Some folks have complained that they lost a big chunk of disk space but
Disk Cleanup won't bring it back. Starting with 1903, about 7GB of
reserve space for temporary storage of updates. This is to ensure a
computer with small storage will have enough room for update downloads.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...0-version-1903
Reserved Storage
Reserved storage sets aside disk space to be used by updates, apps,
temporary files, and system caches. It improves the day-to-day
function of your PC by ensuring critical OS functions always have
access to disk space. Reserved storage will be enabled automatically
on new PCs with Windows 10, version 1903 pre-installed, and for clean
installs. It will not be enabled when updating from a previous version
of Windows 10.

It starts with a hyperlink to:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ge/ba-p/428327

On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 05:38:29 -0400, Paul wrote:

The other style of carpet bombing

Hi Paul,
I do so very much love the way you write!
o You're not in the least bamboozled by Microsoft!

My style of carpet bombing, if it helps the OP is kind of sort of below
(but it's kind of a waste to add a lot of effort to any post in this ng for
long-term use since this ng, unfortunately, is not archived by deja-google,
so we should likely try to cc some other ng which _is_ archived by Google).

Anyway, the OP already knows, from VanguardLH's post, about...
o Win+R %windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe
o Win+R %windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe /autoclean /d %systemdrive%{control+shift+enter}
etc.

Which, as I recall, can carpetbomb a bunch of M$ directories:
1. $Windows.~WS (and BT) == it seems to only risk rollback to delete
2. ESD == it seems also related to installation & rollback to delete
3. MSOCache == it seems to be related to Office 2007 added options
4. output == that was just a stupid directory from some stupid program
5. PerfLogs == it seems to be generated on the fly by MS tools
6. Windows.old == it seems to only risk rollback within a month
7. $SysReset (12 files, 6 folders, 66.3MB)
etc.

Further carpetbombing (Montgomery's words about Caen, as I recall):
o Win+R powershell{control+shift+enter}
o PS c:\ Get-AppxPackage -User uname my_get-appxpackage.log
o PS c:\ Get-AppxPackage -User uname | findstr "PackageFullName" my_PackageFullName.log
o PS: c:\ Remove-AppxPackage Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_3.2.7240.0_ x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
etc.

Anyway, those are from my logs.
--
Usenet is a polite public potluck of purposefully helpful advice.

Ken Blake wrote:
On 6/5/2020 1:23 AM, occam wrote:
When is it safe to delete the windows.old directory, which now has
17.9GB data and some 155,000 files?

The Win 10 2004 version seems to be behaving fine for the last 2 days.




It's entirely up to you. Whenever you feel there's no possibility you
will want to go back to the old version.

But as far as I'm concerned, it's foolhardy to delete it unless you
badly need its disk space.

It's faster to restore from backup, than to use the "Revert" capability.

"Revert" could take an hour, whereas a restore from backup could take
ten minutes.

The fastest restore I've ever done here is 1 minute 30 seconds
(on RAM drive). It can't run any faster, because of the speed limitations
of doing checksum calculations during the restore (they didn't get
the memo about multithreading).

The exception to that, would be a person who stores their entire
movie collection on C: and C: is "too large to backup". I don't
recommend storing significant amounts of data directly on the C: partition,
because it makes the OS hard to manage under extreme conditions.

+-----+----+--------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| MBR | SR | C: (ten minutes) | D: Movies |
+-----+----+--------------------+-----------------------------------------+

Paul

Further carpetbombing, specific to Win10 v2004 Cortana

Prevent Cortana from starting up at boot, and/or delete it:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/C8uKEw5vIMA/SKWnQpywAwAJ

On 05/06/2020 16:58, philo wrote:
On 6/5/2020 3:50 AM, Andy Burns wrote:
occam wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

If you leave it a month, it'll go by itself ...

Thanks. By what mechanism will that happen? Is it a default setting
somewhere I have not noticed?

If you were going to delete it manually, the clean way is to use the
disk cleanup wizard, not sure if the automatic method is a task
scheduler calling the same wizard, or if it just nukes the windows.old
folder directly.






Correct.
Must use the wizard and have it look for system files.

It will initially disappear for maybe ten minutes while it searches.


I ran cleanmgr.exe, but the returned options did not include anything
that resembled the 17.9GB that needs to be cleaned.

I'll wait for the necessary 30 days - and then revisit the issue if
windows.old is still there.


The old installation will not just go away on it's own nor is it
possible to manually delete from within Windows

occam wrote:
On 05/06/2020 16:58, philo wrote:
On 6/5/2020 3:50 AM, Andy Burns wrote:
occam wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

If you leave it a month, it'll go by itself ...
Thanks. By what mechanism will that happen? Is it a default setting
somewhere I have not noticed?
If you were going to delete it manually, the clean way is to use the
disk cleanup wizard, not sure if the automatic method is a task
scheduler calling the same wizard, or if it just nukes the windows.old
folder directly.





Correct.
Must use the wizard and have it look for system files.

It will initially disappear for maybe ten minutes while it searches.


I ran cleanmgr.exe, but the returned options did not include anything
that resembled the 17.9GB that needs to be cleaned.

I'll wait for the necessary 30 days - and then revisit the issue if
windows.old is still there.

The old installation will not just go away on it's own nor is it
possible to manually delete from within Windows


The cleanmgr interface has two levels.

The first level does not list the Windows.old folder.

Click the "System" button, the dialog box disappears
and comes back, and then it works at the second level.
It will then list the Windows.old item.

https://i.postimg.cc/Df47BWFG/cleanmgr.gif

Paul

occam wrote:

I ran cleanmgr.exe, but the returned options did not include anything
that resembled the 17.9GB that needs to be cleaned.

run it "as admin" it'll offer to clean-up more