Need help removing windows.old
I've used the uninstall facility in the add/remove Windows Features (in Control Panel|Programs|Programs and Features) to remove my windows.old folder, and after a reboot, the folder still exists. Kinda.There is still a path to a single installed app setting from XP (C:\Windows.old\Documents and Settings\Pete\Application Data\SecuROM), which I think was related to aCD/DVD security provider tool.But when I use explorer or Opus to try and remove the folder, I start getting strange "unterminated string" kinds of errors (lots of garbage characters in the error dialog buried under the C:\Windows.old\Documents and Settings\ folder structure), using both explorer itself and with Opus.It's no longer available in my Programs and Features list, so obviously this is only a partially removed situation.If anyone can offer some ideas to help figure out where the problem is and how to fix it, I'd much appreciate the help.Data is not Information; Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom.
July 26th, 2009 9:33pm

I've used the Disk Cleanup system tool to get rid of windows.old. Whether it'll work in your current system state, I don't know.
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July 26th, 2009 11:13pm

If you could run rootkitrevealer from Microsoft Sysinternals (needs XP) that might allow/do it. Do google search:remove+securom.Otherwise, live with it.
July 27th, 2009 6:56am

You can also try booting into another OS and deleting the windows.old from there. If you only have 1 OS, you can download a Linux Live CD and boot off of that to use it to delete the windows.old folder. Note that if win7 still uses files in that folder and you delete them, win7 may become unbootable, so make a backup of the drive before proceeding.Hello! Please try every solution given to your problem...and reply back with its results...Click here for my thread on Win7 min. requirements - JoelbX
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July 27th, 2009 4:05pm

I've used the Disk Cleanup system tool to get rid of windows.old. Whether it'll work in your current system state, I don't know. I should have mentioned I've tried that as well, but thanks for the suggestion If you could run rootkitrevealer from Microsoft Sysinternals (needs XP) that might allow/do it. Do google search:remove+securom.Otherwise, live with it. Yeah, booting XP after replacing XP with Win7 isn't really an option for this system.I'm not allthat happy about living with a broken filesystem, even if it's not in my face all the time, but then I was the one who installed W7 from XP, not you!I probably won't do it again, either, unless the comercial release ofW7U won't boot from a DVD without another OS running. You can also try booting into another OS and deleting the windows.old from there.If you only have 1 OS, you can download a Linux Live CD and boot off of that to use it to delete the windows.old folder. Note that if win7 still uses files in that folder and you delete them, win7 may become unbootable, so make a backup of the drive before proceeding. I don't really have any viable options for replacing that drive and booting from another one, unless I start pulling my system apart again and "re prioritising" my IDE drives. Even temporarily, that's a bit of a nighmare for physical reasons that have nothing to do with the computer.But point well taken about trying another booted OS and getting at the structure while windows isn't looking...I know I have a bootable Vista disk I built using Active@Disk, so I'll try that out and see how that goes. And of course, I'll report back.Data is not Information; Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom.
July 27th, 2009 7:52pm

Did youcheck Gozo's suggestion about googling SecuROM? It was kind of diminished in his sentences.Here's the 1st Yahoo! hit about removing it: How to remove Securom... That makes it look a lot grubbier than it is. Use regedit, then search and destroy each instance of SecuROM. Maybe you'll need to right-click them first and give yourself permission. There should be two such keys according to the instructions. Regarding the actual folders, right-click Command Prompt, drop to DOS and manually remove them. (The instructions don't suggest they're some weird proprietary MS licensed reparse-points that we'd be unfamiliar with, so RD should work just fine). First unhide/unsystem them using ATTRIB. If they still resist removal, you'll need to seize ownership and give yourself full permission via the UI first. Let us know if you have success.
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July 27th, 2009 8:28pm

Thanks for pointing that out, I did actually do a search, but the folder and filea in itaren't actually active, i.e. SecurROM isn't actually used in the new OS for anything (I haven't even had time to install NFS:MW and Silent Hunter and the other stuff that used SecurROM :( )This seems to be what I used to know as an inode or link/reference count problem. The 2files in the terminal folder (and there are only 2 files in that entire path)seem to be hopelessly corrupted, textually if not internally.For example, one of the files in that folder is called " ". Which I think points toa folder/file corruption issue. But then,I have (and had) multilingual packs and keyboard installed, so it's possible that the filename I'm seeing is simply a badly-decrypted "image" of the original filenames.But thanks for following up, and thanks also to Gozo for the suggestion, I just forgot to add my results to his idea.Data is not Information; Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom.
July 27th, 2009 9:39pm

I must apologize for a lack of reading comprehension. The "securom" bit didn't register on my first reading.I hope that the stuff is cleanable, after the OP takes ownership of the files, and changes his access to full.
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July 28th, 2009 12:01am

The next step for the really stubborn stuff is ICACLS. Type Help icacls at the Command Prompt. I've not needed to go that brute force with anything yet.
July 28th, 2009 12:25am

OK, here's the results (I hadn't planned on working on this today, but since there's no time like the present...):The owner of the windows.old folderis/was Administrators.The admins grouphave full control "all the way down", and there are no "deny" flags anywhere in the acl or the effective permissions.I can rename any folders in that path, but I can't change or view the 2 files' properties at all. There's no context menu or anything else.I can't delete or modify the files, when I try I get "The system cannot find the file specified" (error 2)That's the main reason I suspected there was a corruption issue somewhere...I took ownership (my specific username) of the windows.old tree, that seemed to go OK (there were no errors, but I know that's not the same thing!). I'm not sure if that achieved anything in terms of changingwhat I could do to the files/tree or not. It didn't appear to make any difference, I can still rename the folders, but not the files.Attempting to delete any part of the tree results in the error "Windows could not find this item. This is no longer located in C:\" (or whichever part of the tree I tried to delete subfolders from).If I run AccessEnum on the tree, the folders all show the correct users with read/write permission and so on, but for the two files, the read and write permissions are listed as "???"I've tried to use ACACLS to view the acl entries, but it fails with the error "The handle is invalid"To be honest, I'm not the kind of person you want running around with a tool like ICACLS - it's a bit like giving a kid a chaingun and saying "Shoot anything that moves".... I know what ACLs are and how they work, but I learned that when I was getting my MSCE and NT4 was the hot new OS. So I'm a) rusty and b) pretty useless if anything goes wrong.If it's worth persisting with the permissions or access control way of fixing these files, I mayneed a bit more help.If it's not worth it (and based solely on my experience with similar "leftover" or "orphaned" folder structures, it might not), I might take Gozo's advice and just live with it.I have made a recent bootable image of this volume, and after checking out the image file, while it has the path, it doesn't appear to have imaged the dodgy files. So worst case, I could just cut my losses and restore the partition and hope that's the answer.What a lot of hooie for such a stupid and tiny problem. I apologise for all the angst.Data is not Information; Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom.
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July 28th, 2009 2:44am

Hmm Free Virtual XP SP3 from MS; Even if it's doesn't fix issue here, there may beuse for it in some other scenario. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx
July 28th, 2009 7:50am

I do a lot of development work in command-line environments, so I won't go all wobbly-kneed when it comes to command lines, I'm sorry if I implied that! I have no problems using CMD.exe to do the things that windows can't, and Take Command 8.02 to do all the things CMD can't.My problem is with running the (obviously quite powerful) ICACLS tool. I can see the help and I've tried some of the examples (using paths and files valid on this system, obviously, and not overwriting existing files where possible), but the results are not easy for me to interpret, and I don't want to start trying out different options just to see what happens. I think I know what would happen then... ;)Gozo, I've installed and I'm running Virtual PC 2007, since I do quite a bit of development work using tools that only run in 32-bit OS environments. I even do some work that only runs in 16-bit environments, and where my Win95 and Win98 PCs are too precious to try stuff out on, I can get to a DOS prompt fine using VPC. I can even get CP/M prompts fine in VPC, but that's not helping here...I can download and install the VPC beta virtual Hard Drive, but I can't get past a server reset error when I try to download the 64-bit version of the VPC installer (Windows6.1-KB958559-x64.msu) itself. I did actually get a copy off a mirror site before the weekend, but it bluescreened immediately when it got to the calculating disk space part of the install. I didn't persist, since it seems I can do what I need better (for now) with VPC 2007.I have to admit, I'm not quite sure how a 32-bit virtual environment might help with a problem like this, but again, I'm new to the Vista/W7 execution environment, and I won't ignore a tool just because I don't know how it might help! So any suggestions might be useful, if I can figure out a way to get the VPC 2007 to provide some of the abilities that might be useful from VPC W7 beta...I'm sorry if I've somehow implied that SecurROM code is executing on this machine. It's not. That's a red herring, and I'm sorry I didn't clear that up sooner!While I migrated the old structures (program files (both flavours) and Docs & Settings) to Windows.old, I did not execute anything in there. In fact, one of the first things I did when I got W7 running stably was to verify that I could access my backup image of the old C: drive, and then used the Windows Features tool to permanently remove all apps and files under windows.old. Or, I tried to delete them all!Unless there is some mechanism where such migrated folders and applications can be executed by the new OS immediately after the build, then there's no possible way that SecurROM code could have somehow been run. I admit that I don't have a lot of knowledge about what is and isn't possible in the post-install situation (I see many users are able to execute various applications directly from within windows.old, but I have no idea if that implies that all the driver and support files and their paths are modified and adapted to run from within windows.old), but unless windows 7 executes things without my knowledge, then I'd have to say that I'm as certain as it's possible to be that there is no SecurROM code, driver, or service executing on this system.If nothing else, being able to rename (if not move or delete) the folders in the path to those dodgy files would imply that there isn't any current code running, or I would expect that I'd get some kind of "In use" or reference count error. Even if not right away, I'd expect to see something in the event logs after a reboot, if the driver or service is using or expecting those files to be in a particular path.Think like Neo : There is no SecurROM! :)I have all the SysInternals tool suite available, although I haven't had much chance to familiarise myself with anything other than the basic process explorer and process monitor. Butboth seem to show nothing is accessing those files or anything in the folder path to those files.While I can understand what the commandline parameters and switches are for, I'm uncomfortable with tools like ICACLS only becauseI don't really understand what the output of the command(s) is telling me in terms of what should be seen from those two darned files.Data is not Information; Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom.
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July 28th, 2009 7:33pm

Are you saying you cannot take ownership, give yourself full permissions,and then remove folderC:\Windows.old\Documents and Settings\Pete\Application Data\SecuROM ?At what step does it refuse?
July 28th, 2009 8:23pm

I did bury that in my blather. Sorry.Yes, I can take ownership of every part of the remaining windows.old path, including the final folder, but not the files themselves.I definitely can't seem to take ownership of the files themselves. When I try using any gui tool (explorer or Opus), I can't actually get a context menu up on either of the two files.When I take ownership of the folder they're in (or any of the higher level folders), and apply the new permissions to the current folder and all subitems, I don't get any error, and there's nothing I can find in the event log (but that might just be me not looking properly).If I use the ICACLStool to report the details,I get:[C:\Windows.old\Documents and Settings\Pete\Application Data\SecuROM\t]icacls * /save \MyTestAcl /t ???????????p????????? : The handle is invalid. Successfully processed 0 files; Failed processing 1 files So what I can't do is delete, take ownership,or modify the files.When I try to delete or modify the files themselves or any part of the path (with my user as the owner of all the folders in the path) I get"Windows cannot find the file specified" error.I hope this helps.Data is not Information; Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom.
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July 28th, 2009 9:39pm

Skip the files. Just kill the containing folder.
July 28th, 2009 9:47pm

I can't. That's why I asked for some advice here...When I try to do anything with any of the folders in thewindows.old path,apart from rename them, I get the "This folder has been moved or renamed" error.After a number of reboots (real reboots and/or physically power off/on, not just logoffs), I can't do anything with the folder. It still appears in the "real" root of my boot drive using any software that can view files and folders, so it seems like it's a physical path on the disk structure, not just a virtual or special folder or junction (but I could be wrong).Chkdsk (the W7 equivalent) doesn't find any errors, either using Properties|Tools|Error Checking from the drive root, or during a scan at boot time.In safe mode, when I try to delete the rootfolder (\windows.old) using Windows Explorer, I get the error "Could not find this item. This is no longer located in C:\. Verify theitem's location and try again."I added the "Owner" and "Attributes" columns to the default explorer folder view while I wasin safe mode, and the owner of that folder is "Phaedrus\Pete", and the only displayed attribute is "D". Probably for D'oh.I took some screenshots anyway while in safe mode, but I'm not sure if it's possible (or evenuseful).I really wish I were better at explaining things. I could have avoided wasting everyone's time if I'd explained the problem and what I've tried to do more clearly, and I apologise that I wasn't more clear to begin with!If no one else is interested apart from a "that's what a broken inode structure looks like, huh?" point of view, and it's not really helping anyone else, I guess I should stop wasting time and just take Gozo's advice, or just take the boot drive out the back with an axe and fix the permissions permanently.
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July 29th, 2009 3:17am

I found a very simple solution to removing these files: 1) Open up Windows Explorer2) Right click on the securom folder3) Choose properties4) Click the advanced button5) Select the "Encrypt contents to secure data"6) Click OK and OK Now delete the directory. This was the only easy way to delete this on a Windows 7 (64) system. I tried a bunch of utilities, etc. and this was the only way I found.
August 24th, 2009 12:57am

Thanks for the suggestion, SJN, but that doesn't work either, I get "An error occurred applying attributes to the file : blah blah blah. The system cannot find the file specified". This is the same error I get whenever I try to apply any kind of change to either of the properties of the two files, which implies a more severe error somewhere that's being hidden. The folder path and any files I happen to put within that path (but obviously not in the terminating folder) do have all options applied, it's just the two corrupted transferred files that seem to be causing the problem.I also tried running the recovery console to see if I could modify the files offline, but it kept asking me for the Administrator's password, which I didn't set at any time during the upgrade from XP x64 to W7 x64, and the XP admin password doesn't work. I'll dig around and see if I can find a way to set that password without an active Administrator user and try again, and report back.-PCPete
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September 28th, 2009 10:37pm

This is after the fact, but have you tried running Disk Cleaner in Safe Mode? Mine wouldn't fix the problem on a normal boot, but it did in Safe Mode.
October 5th, 2010 8:46am

Command prompt elevated level and type: cacls c:\Windows.old /T /G Everyone:F rmdir /s /q c:\Windows.old CESabarre Free Tech Support Bad News: There really is no such thing as Free Tech Support. Good News: Oftentimes a simple thank you is the best form of payment!
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October 5th, 2010 10:14am

Command prompt elevated level and type: cacls c:\Windows.old /T /G Everyone:F rmdir /s /q c:\Windows.old CESabarre Free Tech Support Bad News: There really is no such thing as Free Tech Support. Good News: Oftentimes a simple thank you is the best form of payment! Well this should take care of it. If not here are tools that can surely help you Avenger v2 File assasin KillBox CESabarre Free Tech Support Bad News: There really is no such thing as Free Tech Support. Good News: Oftentimes a simple thank you is the best form of payment!
October 5th, 2010 10:24am

go to start>all programs>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup scan the drive then a box should come up click "cleanup system files" scan again then scroll down in the little box make sure "recent operating system" (or something like that) is ticked click ok and wait and then your folder windows.old will have gon
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March 5th, 2011 4:19am

Click on Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disc Cleanup When the dialog box comes up, select the drive that has the .old files on it and click OK The system then scans for the files to be cleaned up and another dialog box opens with the selection. Click on the button labeled Clean up system files at the bottom of that dialog box. Another dialog box will come up, select the drive again that has the .old files on it. The system will perform another scan for the system files that need to be cleaned up. After scanning, another dialog box opens up and there you will find a list of check boxes. Scroll through and check on the box labeled Older versions of Windows and click OK. That should take care of them. The two aborted install attempts I had as .old files where taking up 16 gigs. This got rid of them.
March 29th, 2012 1:09pm

I had same problem like you. You have to take the ownership of that folder (Windows.old) and then you need to give your account full control permission on that file/folder. After that you can easily delete the folder/file like other folder/files. This method 100% works for any file/folder. Visit : Delete Program Files (x86) from windows 7 . In this site it is shown that how to delete Program Files (x86). You can delete windows.old folder instead of Program Files (x86) using same method.
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July 9th, 2012 2:56am

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