How To Remove Archived Copy Of Vista?

[KurtD]

My son has a 3 y/o Gateway laptop with Vista. Vista became corrupt, but I was able to enter safe mode and after many attempts at troubleshooting and system restore, I initiated the Gateway recovery program. This recovery program essentially copied his C drive to a backup folder and then restored his original Vista installation from an image. I have gone through all the myriad updates and have everything working again, but how do I delete the Windows folder that is now stored within this backup? His disk drive is just about full. I have a vague recollection that there is an old dos command that will do this, but those brain cells must have long since died... Most of the other files/folders seem to just go to the trash bin without fighting me.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,
Kurt

 

[ViRGE]

Normally you don't need any special tools. What error is it throwing you?

 

[KurtD]

No error message, it just doesn't let me delete them. First it asks me to "confirm", which I click "yes" then it says "you need permission to perform this action". I am assuming this has something to do with the security settings in Vista but I have not done much with Windows in many years and not familiar with Vista.

 

[KurtD]

Clicking around in the security settings, I am changing the "owner" from the windows installer to the user... I'm guessing that is the first thing I need to do?

 

[ViRGE]

Yes. Taking ownership usually does the trick. If not, a bit of searching on this subforum will probably turn up something helpful.

 

[KurtD]

Yes, I had to tweak his permissions to get it to work...now I know a little more about how the security settings work!

Thanks.

 

[KurtD]

One more thing. Windows is absurdly large with wayyyyyy too many files and folders!