Reclaim Space After Upgrading to Windows 10

With Windows 10 now making its way on to computers around the world, you may want to know how to immediately claim back space the upgrade uses up to preserve your prior installation of Windows. This tip is perhaps aimed at those who aren’t afraid of closing the door behind them never to return to Windows 7 or 8.1 or those who have external backups making a rollback a fairly simple exercise.

Anyway, this is how you do it:

1. Click on Start,
2. Click on File Explorer in the bottom left of the Start Menu,
3. Click on This PC in the left hand list,
4. Right click on the C drive and left click on Properties in the popup menu,
5. In the new window, click the Disk Clean-up button,
6. After a scan another window will pop up – click the Clean up system files button,
7. Another scan will take place after which another window will pop up,
8. Tick the following items in the list:
   1. Windows upgrade log files,
   2. Previous Windows installation(s),
   3. Temporary Windows installation files,
9. Click OK,
10. Click the Delete Files button on the confirmation popup and let the utility do its thing.

In my instance, I reclaimed 11GB of space but your mileage may vary.