Windows has eaten my hard drive

Fisher

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I ve just done reinstall of vista 64 on my comp and after all the updates ive notice that i was really short on hard drive space. looking into i discovered that there is a duplicate of the windows folder with programs and programs (x86) taking up about 11Gb. i have no idea why this has happened the folder is named windows.old and there is still a normal windows one. i thinking about just hitting the delete key but i thoght i would ask on here first
 
You just did a reinstall with no format? That windows.old will be all of your old files. If there is nothing you want in there, you can delete it. But it wont let you delete it like a regular file. You have to go into accessories and system cleanup or whatever its called. And delete previous installations of windows.
 
no i completely formatted the c drive before, always do. saying that there was a bit of a cock up with a BSOD during the first install and thinking about it now i didnt format it afterwards when trying the second install but i deleted it anyway. thanks for the quick reply tho
 
no you have NOT! formatted it man, just before you install vista it will show you your harddrive and the space, well highlight then click delete then click it again and click next

then it will reinstall windows
 
omfg im sorry for your loss. i knew windows was crap but how on earth can an os actually eat a hdd :eek:
if u manage to get the hdd back then right click on the windows.old folder. go to properties. then security. then set the permissons. the best way is to just replace the owner
 
no but if you delete it it will not fully remove it so a format or even cutting the partion up to avoid losing work and deleting the cutted up partion then merge it back to avoid deleting windows
 
well it worked for me. setting yourself as the owner means you have full access to it and can fully remove it. its the same as doing a format. in both cases you can easily recover the data, except this method is quick and easy. windows.old contains nothing of value. all the new files are simply in "windows"
 
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