Is it safe to delete my WINNT folder if i already have a Windows folder?

[Hammyton]

I tried to install win2k to WINNT folder, but it messed up so i halted the setup and started a win98 install, then upgraded promptly to WINXP, all in the Windows folder, but theres still a 300 megabyte folder called WINNT on my HD.... safe to delete?

 

[ProviaFan]

That sounds like an accident waiting to happen; there are more "extra" folders and files lying around than just what happens to be in \WINNT. You should just start an XP install from scratch, making sure that you reformat your hard drive as NTFS.

 

[Budman]

Since both Win98 & Win XP uses the (c:\windows) folder by default I dont think you will have any problems if you deleted the aborted win2k installation (c:\winnt).

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: jliechty
That sounds like an accident waiting to happen; there are more "extra" folders and files lying around than just what happens to be in \WINNT. You should just start an XP install from scratch, making sure that you reformat your hard drive as NTFS.

I agree on that.
Upgrading from Win98 -> WinXP will probably leave tons of crap around, since they're fundamentally different systems(aside from the obvious smilarity of being two Win32 systems).
Add a borked Win2K install on top of that...

 

[Hammyton]

if i renamed the winnt directory to like "test" or something and my comp worked fine for a week would it be safe to delete it then?

 

[awal]

why dont you just format and reinstall from scratch?

 

[Hammyton]

i have too much stuf I would lose and I dont have a burner to back up my data

 

[KF]

It's safe to delete. Yes renaming will tell you quickly if there is something in there you need. But you will be OK.

Yes there will be some extra files still present in the Windows directory and others, mainly in the Program Files directory. It won't hurt anything.

The only reason to do an upgrade Win98<-XP is to keep the installations of previous software (and things like email in Outlook Express and Internet cookies.) If you don't care about any of that and can easily reinstall your software, you can delete the Windows directory and do a fresh install if you prefer. If XP is an upgrade version, it will just ask you to put in the Win98 CD at some point when it does not find a previous version of Windows.