What Should I Do With Windows.old
Lincoln Spector, Nov 27, 2009
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/182156/what_should_i_do_with_windowsold.html>

Q:
L. Stewart Peirce has upgraded to Windows 7. Can he safely move Windows.old to another drive?

A:
When you upgrade XP or Vista to Windows 7 with the Custom (Advanced) option, the installation program puts all of your data and settings into the C:\Windows.old folder. That folder therefore has some very important stuff in it.

But no programs expect to find their files in Windows.old, so it does no harm to move the folder and its many subfolders elsewhere.

But not immediately. The first thing you should do with Windows.old is move your data out of it and back into Users where it belongs. See the third page of How to Upgrade to Windows 7 for details: <http://www.pcworld.com/article/171432-3/how_to_upgrade_to_windows_7.html>. Once you've moved those files out, there's no harm in moving what's left in Windows.old to an external hard drive, or even burn it to DVDs.

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[Dale Note: Before you 'over-react' to this article, please visit the article at its online address (link provided in title header above) and look at the readers' comments. Don't wildly copy stuff from the Windows.old folder. Do it surgically, especially when going from WinXP to Win7 because the users folders are organized differently:
<http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/04/30/the-differences-between-xp-and-vista-folder-locations/>. Example, My Pictures, a sub-folder of My Documents in WinXP, is Pictures at the same level as Documents in Win7 (and Vista). Likewise with the other "My" WinXP users folders. Blindly copying system files from an older version of Windows to Win7 can cause havoc too. Stick to copying data files and you'll be quite safe, but don't include junk files that for which you have no further need in your new system. At best, those old un-needed files should be stored off-line on CDs, DVDs or other archive media 'just in case' they're needed later. Don't 're-clutter' a nice new system out of the starting gate. As the author suggests, save Windows.old to archive media after you get the data files you really want moved into their respective folders of the new system.]

(Win7_WinOldFldr.htm)