Shawn's Blog

a hair-band lovin', techni-junkie's banter about… whatever.

Remove old remnants from a downgrade of Vista 64 bit to 32 Bit

Posted on | March 15, 2010 | No Comments

I’ve recently had to do a downgrade of a Vista 64 bit machine to Vista 32 bit. Because I have a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade, I was only able to do a “Clean” install of Windows, from within Windows itself. Despite what the “Clean” install seems to indicate, the HDD is not formatted, and your old files are left on the machine. Because of this, Windows Vista left the “Program Files (x86)” folder intact, and renamed the 64 Bit Windows folder to “Windows.old”. Upon completing the installation of Windows, I wanted to remove all traces of the old installation, and proceeded to Windows Explorer to delete the old directories. “Windows.old” deleted without a hitch, however, “Program Files (x86)” requires “special permission”, and would not delete, even in Safe Mode. After some digging, here is the solution:

    1. Run the command prompt as “Administrator”
    2. Type in : takeown /f “C:\Program Files (x86)” /r /d n
    3. Type in : icacls “C:\Program Files (x86)” /grant administrators:F /t
    4. Go back into Windows Explorer and delete the folder as usual
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Category: Computers, Hacks

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