Unable to remove previous versions of windows

My laptop was upgraded to Windows 10 around a year back and for the most part has been behaving itself - except for one occasion when a restore was needed to get things working again. This resulted in 2 folders on the C: drive: Windows.old and Windows.old(1). I have tried to remove these by a number of methods including the standard System>Storage>This PC>Temporary storage and then selecting to clear temporary files and previous versions of windows but this did not work.
I then tried the following command using an elevated command prompt:

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

This successfully removed the Windows.old(1) folder and subordinate folders but I am still unable to remove Windows.old. When I enter the prompt I simply get a rapidly scrolling screen indicating Access denied against each attempt to delete an item.

Can anyone advise how to remove the offending folder tree under these circumstances?

Brink said:

Hello MACH1000, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

If you haven't already, you might see if an option in the tutorial below may allow you to.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2...dows-10-a.html

Brilliant! Many thanks for this link, I had already tried options 1 & 2 together with things like attempting to amend the folder attributes from winthin Windows, but Option 3, Booting to command prompt enabled me to quickly identify the drive with the offending folder and to remove it, thereby freeing up a chunk of space.
:)