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raider bill

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I had to fix my son's laptop with "Media Creation tool" and a thumb drive to get it working again.

It looks like it installed a new copy of Windows over the old one, keeping the old one as Windows.old

Can I just get rid of that one? The hard drive is damn near full now.
 

WizardHawk

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Yes
 

Old Lion

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Just make sure you create a restore point on the new one.
 

raider bill

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Just make sure you create a restore point on the new one.

I will have to check that out.. I thought he had it set up to restore automatically, but when I went to restore it said there were no restore points.

Tried resetting to defaults "Windows Encountered a Problem"

Attempting reboot just got endless loop of HP screen

Spamming the F11 button upon restart got me into the HP utility, and the hardware all checked out, so I chose the option to re install windows from a thumb drive, then used the MS website to create an installation ISO on the thumb drive.

I wasn't sure what the fuck I was doing, but it worked out OK it would seem.
 

WizardHawk

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I will have to check that out.. I thought he had it set up to restore automatically, but when I went to restore it said there were no restore points.

Tried resetting to defaults "Windows Encountered a Problem"

Attempting reboot just got endless loop of HP screen

Spamming the F11 button upon restart got me into the HP utility, and the hardware all checked out, so I chose the option to re install windows from a thumb drive, then used the MS website to create an installation ISO on the thumb drive.

I wasn't sure what the fuck I was doing, but it worked out OK it would seem.
Normally when you upgrade Windows to a new version it saves the prior under windows.old and automatically deletes that like 30 days after install. After that much time too much has changed to roll back anyway.

In your case it would seem they didn't reformat the drive and simply moved the old OS. I would also assume then that the files you had and programs that were installed before are still there as well, however those apps no longer work without being reinstalled.

You can likely go back and look under the users folder and find your old desktop, downloads, etc. I would look at those and try to recover whatever you may need to before removing the old OS, however it isn't likely having that old OS is of any value. The safe way to remove that is to open Settings, System, Storage, and clicking the link "Free up space now" If there is an entry for 'previous version of windows' select that and let it remove it. There are likely other items related to this recovery that it can help clean up such as things like windows update log files or windows update cleanup.

I would try to recover any lost data first. If your HD is nearly full I would suspect it has a ton of now disconnected files, programs, downloads, and more taking up space that are no longer findable by your current OS.

There are likely tons of guides online for cleaning that stuff up.
 

huskers1217

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tell him to get of the p0rn

or tell him job well done.

I won't judge your parenting skills






but yeah - keep a restore point and delete
 

raider bill

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It literally has nothing on it 20 gig HD

Like 9 gigs of windows

and 9 gig of windows.old

His school is in a Google enviroment so he stores all his shit on Google drive. The only ap he had on there was Chrome
 

raider bill

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The computer works just slowly due to limited HD space. I think I read you can dump win.old with disk cleanup
 

tnapucco

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The computer works just slowly due to limited HD space. I think I read you can dump win.old with disk cleanup
Open an elevated command prompt.

type "cleanmgr /sagerun:11"

In the dialog that opens, select EVERYTHING.

Then run cleanmgr.exe from your System32 folder or through the command prompt.

You're welcome.
 

raider bill

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Open an elevated command prompt.

type "cleanmgr /sagerun:11"

In the dialog that opens, select EVERYTHING.

Then run cleanmgr.exe from your System32 folder or through the command prompt.

You're welcome.

I didn't understand any of that. Disc Cleanup asked me if I wanted to remove prior versions of windows, so I did that. Seems to work fine now.. like when it was brand new.

I think the entire thing got hosed when he checked off an update to Windows 10.1
 

WizardHawk

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I didn't understand any of that. Disc Cleanup asked me if I wanted to remove prior versions of windows, so I did that. Seems to work fine now.. like when it was brand new.

I think the entire thing got hosed when he checked off an update to Windows 10.1
Basically he was giving you a command line version of what you did. I really don't advise people who aren't comfortable around the command prompt use potentially destructive commands.

You aren't alone if a Windows update did wreck your OS. Typically it's just an issue with the boot loader and that can be fixed with the repair utilities found on the install media or also available by download, however it normally requires a command prompt. It sounds like you had nothing really to lose with a full factory reset or over install so that's never a bad option. It not only fixes your boot problem, but probably also cleans up other messes that accumulate on every windows machine over time.
 

raider bill

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My DOS game is weak....I wasn't really comfortable even doing what I did, but I had nothing to lose LOL
 
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