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How To Clean the Cruft Left By a Windows 10 Upgrade

Posted by timothy on from the upgrade-is-a-term-of-art dept.

MojoKid writes: Microsoft may have given you a free Windows 10 upgrade but it's not without some left over file clutter that some folks don't realize is left on a system after migration. It's not rocket science but there are a few key strategies to tidy up the file bloat an OS migration can sometimes leave behind and to further optimize an upgraded Windows 10 installation. The ability to roll back to your Windows 7 or 8.1 installation within 30 days is a very easily overlooked feature of the Windows 10 upgrade process. The feature is a lifesaver if you encounter issues, such as missing or incompatible drivers, and need to quickly recover without starting from scratch. This ability doesn't come without consequences, though. In order to offer this feature, Windows 10 is essentially keeping another completely separate Windows installation on your PC. This will need to go, once you've determined that you are sticking with Windows 10 and everything seems happy enough. These files are scattered throughout your system and include a number of hidden directories, with the bulk of them located in Windows.old and the hidden $Windows.~BT and $Windows.~WS directories.

5 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Windows 10 "IS" the cruft by jkrise · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Stay with Windows7. You ain't losin' nothin'.

    --
    If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
  2. Re:The easiest way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Boot any live image, run: "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=64K" for as long as it takes, then install linux distro of your choice.

  3. Re: Easiest way to do this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why didn't you just use the windows media creation tool and skip all of that work?

  4. Re: Easiest way to do this. by SlashdotWanker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why didn't you just use the windows media creation tool and skip all of that work? http://windows.microsoft.com/e...

  5. Re: There is a tool for that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm honestly sorry to be rude but I seriously could care less what you did on you home computer and what your reasoning was for installing a Linux distro.

    Windows is installed on the majority of computers so this information is important for those of us who run Windows. Any information to help clean up various old data from an upgrade is welcome as is the various techniques for shutting down all of Microsoft's tracking. If I need to use Linux for something which is very rare, I can just fire up VirtualBox and run Linux flavor distro # 525 whenever I need to.