solved How to delete Windows system files from second hard drive

You don't have permission to delete System folder on a second hard drive

[Sam-gr]

Can we appreciate the effort this man put, to speak English

[billyclement]

That, my friend, was a thing of beauty. You have just saved my sanity- this was driving me nuts! Very many thanks.

[stillsalty]

Thanks so much for making this video, it saved me a bunch of time and headache. Just a heads up: my Windows.old folder was 27GB and it took several minutes (~7) for the disk cleanup window to appear after I hit the button. For a while, I thought this technique would not work for me. But when I came back the window was there and worked exactly like he showed it here.

[aardvark_]

Thanks for the tip, worked well!


This did NOT delete any personal files kept within the drive I was working on (something I was worried about)

[prairiebassman]

Thank you so much! I had added a second SSD containing all my files plus the old Windows 7. I had to run your procedure a few times to clear all the old folders, but I finally erased them all.

[james]

THANK YOU, i tried so many different permission actions and now my computer is a little weird but this finally got rid of the windows file!

[AssassinIronMan]

I looked for this video but it was hard to find because of the dumb YouTube search algorithm

[bettergadget]

24.8gb of unnecessary files showed up. Thanks genius!

[CUB-qyhj]

Just rename the folder from whatever it is to "Windows.old" then follow the instructions int the video . Note pay attention that their is a fullstop after WIndows then old which is lowercase .
I used an ssd and installed w10 on it but my old HDD already had w10 so i had to delete it and this video was very helpful.
Thanks man

[rubikmonat]

Fantastic, thanks. I literally googled for half an hour before finding this. Commenting and liking to bump it up the search algorithm. This solved my problem.

[ruls]

Did you know you still help people since 2018? You sir, rock!

[chotachitto]

thanks for the easiest way of disk cleanup. i was searching for days on youtube for this one but found useless ways.

[tcrenshaw]

Thank you! This did exactly what I needed it to do to free up space without losing old pictures that were saved in the user data and the games I had installed from steam to that drive. every other tut I seen wanted me to format the whole drive lol

[BackAlleyKnifeFighter]

Thank you! I can't believe deleting the old files would be such a pain in the ass. Even changing permissions wouldn't work!

[PhantomMods]

I wish I found this video hours ago. Somehow reformatting hard drives corrupted my windows and ive been working since last night to find a solution to keep all my files. I put windows on a 120 SSD to boot to and removed the corrupted files by hooking up my 1tb SSD and doing this.

Thank you.

[HerecomestheCalavera]

Wow thank you! I never knew about this. I had a second drive with an old Windows Installation on it that wouldn't let me delete any of the system folders. I just renamed Windows, Program Files, Users...etc one by one to Windows.old and ran the disk cleanup and it deleted them no problem. Again thanks a lot, this is a very valuable Windows tip to know!

[vidarCRC]

This was of great help, hundreds of GB are back for me to fill them with useless stuff once againg. Thank you friend!

[rodman]

Thanks a ton, you just saved me almost 11GB. I was using my old SSD as a secondary game drive but it had my old Windows install on it. It would not delete and after renaming it, it showed up in the disk cleanup. Thanks again!

[Starsnu]

Thank you so much for making this video. It is way better than the other tips I tried to use so I could remove my old copy of Windows on a previously used drive. Great work!

[HereIsmarcus]

Brilliant little trick. I've deleted loads of old files now. Thanks !