windows.old

I have upgraded from win 7 to win 8 keeping personal files etc. Now I find that there is a file : windows.old which is of substantial size about 23 gig. My question is what happens if delete this fie assuming that I do not want to go back to win 7 ?

I thought windows.old was a folder not a file?

In previous version of windows it was and installations put all old files into there so there is a fallback. If you did a clean install it saved everything there and you could recover afterwards.

If it is a folder have a look at its contents - if "my documents" and other folders are there and the contents are not in the new folders then recover them from there.

Assuming there is nothing you need in there you "can" delete this. Google "windows.old" - many hits about this.

it's your old settings and stuff in case you needed to go back. As a test rename it to notwindows.old and reboot to check everything still works then you'll know it's safe to delete.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/228884/keep_win_old.html