do i need windows.old

[andreasaspenberg]

my new laptop have windows 10 but it does have a folder called windows.old. do i need that for anything?

 

[Kazeon]

It's a back up of your old windows files. You can grab old files from there (like fonts, games save datas, documents, etc). Other than that, it's safe to delete.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

what old windows files? it came with the pc which was new when i purchased it.

 

[Kazeon]

What is the Windows.old Folder and How Do You Delete It?

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i did some research on my own to figure out what system the windows.old folder contained and found it to contain vista 64 bit. is there any way to re-enable it so that i can switch between systems?

 

[Kazeon]

Then it's because your PC was originally operated by vista. It would be different if it used free DOS.
I don't know if you can have different Windows versions at once. But you can have multiple OS like Linux and Windows at once.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

multiple windows versions at once is possible and i have used that earlier. how can it even have been running vista when it is brand new?

 

[Kazeon]

I believe it's some kind of bonus. If you were only given free DOS, you will have to install your own OS, which is not free. But by having an OS like Vista originally installed, you don't necessarily have to install another OS, which mean you've saved some money. And the good things is that the OS is guaranteed to be original. But when you want to upgrade the OS to higher version, then it's your choice.

It was already installed with Vista doesn't mean it's been used before. Don't worry.

 

[Dr Super Good]

You can install multiple OSes, it is called multi boot. You need to install them and register them with the bootstrap loader. Before the OS loads you will be given a choice to choose which OS to boot into.

andreasaspenberg the folder is created every time you upgrade to Windows 10. This can be confusing since if you already have Windows 10 it can upgrade itself to a newer version. This removes the update bloat that Windows Vista, 7 and 8 suffered from since each time it upgrades to Windows 10 it pretty much cleans itself out.

Such upgrades are incremental. There have been at least 2 since Windows 10 launched. There is scheduled to be another one in July to mark its anniversary (after which only upgrading Windows 10 to a newer Windows 10 will be free). Every time the upgrade happens it copies all "removed" files to the "Windows.old" folder. The folder is automatically deleted after either 30 or 90 days and serves as a backup incase something very bad happens.