I just installed Windows 7 with Vista previously installed on it. The install went fine, but in the Windows.old folder, there are two files that I just can't delete, and they appear to be in a different language. They look like this: According to Windows Explorer, one is 16 bytes in size, and the other is 444 bytes in size. They have no file extension (I have 'hide file extension for known file types' turned off, so I'm sure), and I get this error whenever I try to delete it: "Could not find this item This is no longer located in C:\Windows.old\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\SecuROM\UserData. Verify the item's location and try again." If I click try again, it just pops up immediately afterward. My question is: Are there any cmd commands I can use to force Windows to delete these two files? I have also tried to delete these files in cmd using the "del," command, and I get pretty much the same error, saying: "Could not find C:\Windows.old\Users\Nathan\AppData\Roaming\SecuROM\UserData\?????????????????" I'm not really sure what SecuROM is.... Any help in this issue will be greatly appreciated.

SecuROM is a copy protection mostly used by games, and can be a bit hard to remove (it works like a rootkit).The first thing I would try is to uninstall the program (game) that installed SecuROM, hopefully it's gone, then. If not, try to contact the producers of SecuROM themselves. They offer uninstallers for their nasty apps.Mobile AMD64 3000+, VIA Apollo K8T800 chipset, 1 G RAM, ATIRadeonMobility 9700, 20x DVDRW, C:XPSP3 (55G),D:WIN7 (25G),F:DATA (250G)

I checked in my Programs and Features window, and there aren't any games listed. This was a game that was installed on Windows Vista, my previous operating system, and stored in Windows.old, so I'm guessing that's why it isn't listed in that window. I tried using the SecuROM Removal Tool found here, but it didn't show any components for it to remove. I guess I'll try taking it out through a linux cli and post back the results if I need any more help. Thanks for the reply! EDIT: I just tried deleting the two files through Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD, and it worked beautifully!

I had the same issue.. I found a Microsoft instruction that does the trick.... http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/930527/en-us type rmdir /S /Q <DriveLetter>:\<FolderName>\, and then press ENTER.--- For me it was rmdir /s /q c:\windows.old\ after running this command, the windows.old folder just dissapeared (I had deleted everything else in the folder) . Also,the delete old operating system clean up option does not show up any longer in that menu...