Vista Home and Windows.Old files

[Sherrie]

I upgraded my granddaughter's computer from Win.2000 to Vista Home. It had
to do a clean install since it was upgrading from Win. 2000 and it stored
the previous installation in a folder called Windows.old. This folder takes
up 6GB of space and she only has 3GB left on the drive. After all this work
I don't want to install a new hard drive if I can avoid it. She can live
with only 3GB of drive left but it would help if I could move the
Windows.old to an external USB drive. Can I move Windows.old to an external
USB drive and just plug it in if I ever have to reinstall Vista? Since I
bought the upgrade DVD I need the previous installation if I ever need to
reinstall but I would prefer it to be on a different but accessible drive if
possible. I found the Windows Transfer program but it just copies files. I
didn't see an option to completely move a folder.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Gordon]

I upgraded my granddaughter's computer from Win.2000 to Vista Home. It
had to do a clean install since it was upgrading from Win. 2000 and it
stored the previous installation in a folder called Windows.old. This
folder takes up 6GB of space and she only has 3GB left on the drive.
After all this work I don't want to install a new hard drive if I can
avoid it. She can live with only 3GB of drive left but it would help if
I could move the Windows.old to an external USB drive. Can I move
Windows.old to an external USB drive and just plug it in if I ever have
to reinstall Vista? Since I bought the upgrade DVD I need the previous
installation if I ever need to reinstall but I would prefer it to be on
a different but accessible drive if possible. I found the Windows
Transfer program but it just copies files. I didn't see an option to
completely move a folder.

Thanks for the help!

You don't need to keep the windows.old folder. All it contains of use to
you is your old data files. Make sure that you have transfered all the
data, ie documents, emails, pictures etc etc to the new installation of
Vista, then you can delete it.

 

[Gordon]

I did this once and it wound up really hosing the machine. I didn't
think it would either. I wound up rebuilding the machine from scratch.
I'd suggest first renaming Windows.old to Windows.older and see how it
runs before actually deleting or moving the folder.

-Frank

Then something else happened. Windows.old has no effect on the running
of the current version of windows at all.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I upgraded my granddaughter's computer from Win.2000 to Vista Home.

No, an upgrade from Windows 2000 to Vista Home is not possible (as you
say below). What you did was *not* an upgrade.

It had to do a clean install since it was upgrading from Win. 2000

Yes (as I said above), but....

and it stored the previous installation in a folder called Windows.old.

Then you did not do a clean installation. A clean installation starts
by formatting and removing everything that's on the drive. It's done
by booting from the Vista DVD.

So exactly how did you do this?

This folder takes
up 6GB of space and she only has 3GB left on the drive. After all this work
I don't want to install a new hard drive if I can avoid it. She can live
with only 3GB of drive left but it would help if I could move the
Windows.old to an external USB drive. Can I move Windows.old to an external
USB drive and just plug it in if I ever have to reinstall Vista?

Two points:

1. You don't need it to reinstall Vista.

2. If you have an external drive, you can simply remove the drive from
the USB case, and install it in the computer case as a second drive.
It's easy to do, and it will give you more than the *tiny* amount 3GB
of free space that's presently there.