Now that Windows 8.1 has been released, a lot of users will be downloading and installing the update. When your computer updates, it saves all of your former Windows 8 OS files into a folder on your C: drive called Windows.old. This folder contains everything needed to roll back to Windows 8 should the installation fail. However, once the installation is complete, and you’ve been able to log in and ensure that everything is working fine, that folder ceases to be useful. That’s about 6 GB of useless junk clogging up your hard drive.
If you aren’t psyched about losing that much good disk space to crap, you can flush it using Windows built-in Disk Cleaner utility. V Laurie recently posted an article on Gizmo’s Freeware explaining the process and it’s pretty quick. You simply right-click your C: drive in the File Explorer, click “Properties” and then click “Disk Cleanup.” Select “Clean up system files” when the utility launches and wait for it to scan. Make sure to select “Previous Windows Installations” from the list of results and then click “OK.” Just like that you gain back Gigs of space you can use for better things. Make sure to have a look at the other items you can delete to gain back even more space while you’re at it.
If you know anyone else who recently updated, make sure to share this with them.
Original Source – Gizmo’s Freeware – An Important Disk Cleanup Job After Upgrading to Windows 8.1
