Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Cleaning up the old installation after Windows 8 Upgrade


Note: Please make sure that you copy the required files from Windows.old before following the steps mentioned in the article. Once you cleanup the old install, there is no easy way to get the files from there.

If you have upgraded from Windows XP / Vista / 7 to Windows 8 recently, you could be running in to this issue, like me. Unlike the previous version (Win 7), you cannot “Forcibly” delete system files, even if you have logged in as admin. If you try to force delete the files, you might receive this error :





It used to happen to me all the time, after the OS reinstall with Windows 7, but usually I will be able to reset the security permissions for the folder and clear out the ACL’s, but with Windows 8, I am unable to do so. I get below error while trying to reset the permissions. Looks like this is the expected behavior! (or a bug).




I found a simple solution to get rid of this. Tick is to use the good old “Disk Cleanup” tool (For those, who don’t know what it is, this is a  small utility I am using ever since 98 to “Safely” delete the temp files”)

Hit start button (Win key) and start typing “Free up disk space” or “Disk cleanup” and select “Settings”. In that select the option “Free up disk space by deleting unnecessary files”.




In the subsequent menu, click on the button “Cleanup System files” (Of course you need to login as Administrator)




It will be a while until this utility does it’s thing and gather all the required info.



In the subsequent screen, select “Previous Windows installation(s)”




Also, if you don’t require the Windows 8 install files, check that as well.
Click “Delete Files”



Wait till this to complete:



Voila! It’s gone!

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