I'm looking to do a clean installation of Windows 11 from our existing Windows 10 clients. After the installation, I noticed that the Windows.old folder is still present. Is there any way to prevent this from happening? I'm using the following command for the setup: setup.exe /auto clean /compat ignorewarning /eula accept /dynamicupdate disable /imageindex 3. Also, I found that after the upgrade, I can delete it using rd /s /q C:Windows.old, but I'd prefer if there was a way to avoid having the folder created in the first place.
3 Answers
I don't really see it as a major issue. You can just delete the Windows.old folder once the upgrade is complete! But if there was a way to disable it during installation, that would be great.
After the 24H4 release, it seems that even when you install Windows 11 from an ISO on a blank drive, the Windows.old folder still gets created. It's a bit of a mystery why this happens, but it looks like it’s something inherent to the installation process.
The Windows.old folder is part of the distribution setup and is used to allow rollbacks to the previous version for a limited time. If that's not what you need, you can always remove it using Disk Cleanup under temporary files.
Yeah, having a parameter to stop that from happening would definitely make things easier!