HP Laptop weird message on health check

[Guest]

My Laptop did an automatic health check and this is one of the results
Which I dont understand as it has never had an older version of windows that I know of its only about 3 months old

a copy of an older version of Windows is using significant hard disk space.
When you upgraded from Windows XP to Window Vista or re-installed Windows Vista the previous version of Windows was saved in a folder c:\windows.old. This folder is very large (greater than 5 GB) depending on the number of programs and data files that existed on your previous version of Windows. HP recommends copying any old files you want over to your new version and delete Windows.old to free up disk space.

[jtaubman]

I wonder if some one had it before you? Double check all your files are in Documents etc and then delete the windows.old directory. If you are interested you could have a browse through to see if there is any data in the user folders with in the old directory.

[Guest]

surely not ??? I would be absolutely furious if thats the case had enough trouble with the other one
thanks going to have a look

[hughar]

If it's only three months old, I'd be inclined to talk to the people you got it from before taking any other action. Maybe it wasn't new, but was 'pre-owned and refurbished'? Did it come with a full guarantee?

[Guest]

yes it did and it cost a fortune too I'm sure it must be a mistake I have done what they say but cannot find the windows old folder ??????

[jtaubman]

If it's there look by going to "Computer" then the C: drive. The windows.old folder should be there. You might need to go to the folder options and show hidden files, although from memory it should be visible to all users.

[Jill on the A272]

Val I had an identical messeage, but found no files matching that description so have ignored it.

[Guest]

did you Jill how odd I gave up in the end anyway thanks

[Margaret N]

Val, You are not having much luck with your computing at the moment are you? Do you think that while the laptop was new it may have had XP on it and when XP was no longer supported it was upgraded to Vista? In that case it may have left the shell of the XP. Either way I would not be happy about it.

Jill, Was your laptop the same make or from the same supplier?

[Guest]

hyer Margaret had no trouble since I bought another router for the laptops seems that was my problem all the time touch wood.
This is only a glip, this Laptop does a health check then gives you a list to go through and for some reason it picked up this error sure its a mistake as I have hunted and cannot find any old folders .

[nigele2]

I really wouldn't worry about these sort of things. Windows is continually on the move due to its bad design, subject to mal interaction between lots of components written by numberous people at different times, and is generally untested (except by joe public). The chances of an error message being useful is IMH experience much less than 50-50.

Any reload on refurbished disks would be very very crude if it did not wipe clean the disk beforehand. There could be legal ramifications for not doing so.

Sadly if you had XP you could have saved money with less memory and a more stable system - sorry must go another Vista update has arrived :D

[Grimsqueaker]

HP's use a seperate partition on the had disk to store your recovery information - to reinstall windows you press a key to boot from that partition and follow the instructions.

This partition is regularly detected by a lot of apps as being Windows XP due to how vista's installer works.

There is nothing wrong with your laptop Val, just an over cautious piece of software highlighting what could be, on another system, an issue needing to be resolved.

[Guest]

thanks Nigel for that and Grimsqueaker I am relieved to hear that