Windows 8 Refresh and Windows.old

[mardique]

So, after a shortage, Windows decided that it would simply not start anymore.
So I did the Refresh option it gave me because the option said that it would try to keep as much as possible (the other option was Reset which said it would do exactly that, reset everything).

Now, the only thing it kept is my documents so we're off to a magnificent start already.

And then there's the Windows.old folder it created that contains the previous installation.
The thing is that I'm on a SSD so space is limited, and that folder is taking over 20 GB of that very space.

And it won't let me delete it.
So how do I do that?

If the procedure is complicated or involves downloading 3 programs, then I'll just wipe.
I've already pretty much lost that installation, and copying my docs isn't hard so, yeah.

 

[patcooke]

Sounds like the easy option is a complete reinstall - always to be preferred in any case as it does not import any baggage and, as you say, by the time you have finished trying to recover and tweak everything it will be quicker to just save your docs and wipe everything.

 

[mardique]

Okay, this is weird. Because, not only did it delete the majority of the folder by itself, but now it lets me delete the rest as well. All that's left is one file that it can't delete because it says the name is too long but I can't even rename it. So I'm still going to wipe everything but this is just strange.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Just in case you don't want to wipe everything a way to get around these errors is to create a Ubuntu disk and boot to it.
It will let you delete whatever you want because it doesn't care what Windows thinks.

I always keep an up to date one around, it will boot practically anything and allow you to retrieve your data from a computer that won't boot into Windows before doing a reinstall.

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Mike

 

[mardique]

Hi

Just in case you don't want to wipe everything a way to get around these errors is to create a Ubuntu disk and boot to it.
It will let you delete whatever you want because it doesn't care what Windows thinks.

I always keep and up to date one around, it will boot practically anything and allow you to retrieve your data from a computer that won't boot into Windows before doing a reinstall.

Mike

I know full well what Linux can do. Especially since I have 11 different distros, all of them ready to boot and kept up to date.
(In order: Netrunner, Mint, Rosa, Manjaro, Knoppix, Ubuntu, Fedora, Puppy, Crunchbang, Arch and Debian, waiting to add Ultimate Edition and Steam OS)
And I feel dumb for forgetting about them.