Unable to remove Window.old

Tonight, I thought I might as well get rid of the Windows.old and the Windows10upgrade. First, I used Revo Uninstaller to take out Windows10Upgrade. When it came up to uninstall, I thought no, I'll do this later. So hitting the X up in the right hand corner did nothing. So I went to Task Manager and hit the End Task. Great But then Revo came up to do a search in the Registry to I let it go. Clicked deleted on what it found and no problem.
Then I went to Diskcleanup and cleaned up all the files, including Clean up System files. In there I made sure to check off everything actually. Doing this twice, Windows.old and Windows10upgrade are still showing in File Explorer. I might add, that "previous windows installation" is not showing in the Disk Cleanup. Yet it is still there in File Explorer.
I guess my question is, is there another way to remove this stuff so I can free up Disk space?

I had the same experience trying to remove windows.old and its subfolders (which were all empty after doing the disk cleanup). I had to take ownership of all, change permissions to full control for my account, remove read only, and then delete all, including windows.old.

Did you have to do what you did to each separate folder within Windows.old or just Windows.old itself?Did you have to finally use Disk cleanup to finally remove it or just delete it from File Explorer? I'm also seeing nothing in each of the folders.
Also, what do you make of not being able to uninstall Windows10Upgrade?

Maggidon said:

Did you have to do what you did to each separate folder within Windows.old or just Windows.old itself?Did you have to finally use Disk cleanup to finally remove it or just delete it from File Explorer? I'm also seeing nothing in each of the folders.
Also, what do you make of not being able to uninstall Windows10Upgrade?

I believe once the ownership was properly set I was able to select multiple folders within a folder and delete them at the same time. I was able to delete everything and did not need to run Disk Cleanup to remove the windows.old top folder. The process took only a few minutes once I figured it out.

It's interesting that I had the windows.old folder delettion issue only on my Surface Pro 4 -- my desktop windows.old folder deleted fully with Disk Cleanup. It was the other way around with a previous major update to Windows 10 late last year.

I do not have a Windows1oUpgrade so I can't comment on that.

"Ownership properly set" ... easily said but how? Would you recommend this following link to do what I think you're saying?
Delete Windows.old Folder after a Windows Upgrade | PCsteps.com

OR ... will this following command work to remove Windows.old after the Anniversary Update has been installed?

RD /S /Q %SystemDrive%\windows.old

I've got CCleaner up and going now as I type. I'm getting this there warning that says "All the System and User files from your previous Windows installation will be deleted. Please ensure these are not required before selecting this option."
I understand the "files being required" refers to one wanting to downgrade to an earlier of Windows and not the present OS needing anything in here, correct? I also take it then just hit the OK is fine but remember, this is a weird situation. The Folder is there with subfolders but there is absolutely nothing in either of the Folders. If you were sitting here in front of someone else computer, would you just hit the ok since if there was a problem, it really wouldn't matter that much because it's someone else's computer. Seriously, I take it it is ok to continue on with CCleaner. Please advise.

Maggidon said:

"Ownership properly set" ... easily said but how? Would you recommend this following link to do what I think you're saying?
Delete Windows.old Folder after a Windows Upgrade | PCsteps.com

OR ... will this following command work to remove Windows.old after the Anniversary Update has been installed?

RD /S /Q %SystemDrive%\windows.old

I believe the process is the link it what I used, or is similar to it, to change ownership. I don't know what the RD command line options are so I can't reply to that.

Give me your opinion pjllb with regards to going ahead with the CCleaner to remove Old Windows. Got to admit, I'm always half afraid these programs will do something to the main OS and leave me in great pains. In other words, have you or would you use it to remove Windows.old?