Windows Dot Old File Preventing Full System Scan from Completing

Carmie5 · ‎04-01-2012

Last week, my computer was infected with the happili dot com virus. I was doing a simple google search and was constantly being re-booted.

I brought it to Staples and $200 later, it was supposed to be free of all viruses with my OS (Windows Vista) reinstalled.

After reinstalling my Nortons Internet Security, I ran a full system scan - at least 10 times and each time, the system froze at the following point - windows.old\windows\winsxs\catalogs\ . . .

The Case Manager at Nortons told me that windows overinstalled on the old windows and he removed the old windows file from the scan and the Full System Scan completed itself without a problem.

My question is this, when the OS was reinstalled, why wasn't the old windows folder removed? Will this cause me any problems in the future? Can the windows old folder be permenently removed?

Thank you!

huwyngr · ‎04-13-2008

Carmie,

I can't speak on VISTA and Windows.old but that folder is there for recovery to a previous version according to this MSKB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933168

Widows.old is also a folder created by Windows 7 for use when upgrading from an earlier version of Windows, especially VISTA where you do upgrade but also from XP if you use the Windows Easy Transfer Utility,

When this is the background of your installation Windows.old will contain some of the data and settings files from your old Windows in case you need to access them.

Microsoft say you can delete the folder whenever you want if you do not need it any more.

I just checked one of my clean Windows 7 installations and it also contains the folder Windows.old but it is empty of all but some system files that Windows puts all over the place. So certainly no harm will have been done by deleting Windows.old

I can't answer any of the "why" questions .... especially since we don't know how Staples did the reinstall .... whether they used the recovery media or builtin recovery partition or whether they used a Windows media disk.

I hope you are clear of happili but I seem to remember Quads saying that it all depended on how the recovery was done.

Hugh

Carmie5 · ‎04-01-2012

Just got my laptop back. The Windows Vista OS had to be re-installed and the Windows.old file was removed - something about unchecking a box on re-install. It was a huge and corrupt file that was preventing Full System Scan from completing.

Hope all will be well now. Fingers crossed . . .