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Delete $Windows.~BT & $Windows.~WS Safely

$Windows.~BT and $Windows.~WS are temporary folders created during a Windows upgrade that can safely be deleted to reclaim disk space. They contain no important user files or settings. To delete them, take ownership of the folders using command prompt as Administrator and remove them. Deleting these folders after confirming the new Windows installation is functioning properly will eliminate unused upgrade files and free up valuable storage capacity without impacting the upgraded system.

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574 views4 pages

Delete $Windows.~BT & $Windows.~WS Safely

$Windows.~BT and $Windows.~WS are temporary folders created during a Windows upgrade that can safely be deleted to reclaim disk space. They contain no important user files or settings. To delete them, take ownership of the folders using command prompt as Administrator and remove them. Deleting these folders after confirming the new Windows installation is functioning properly will eliminate unused upgrade files and free up valuable storage capacity without impacting the upgraded system.

Uploaded by

Anonymous 4Altbm6
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Can I delete $Windows.

~BT &
$Windows.~WS folders after Windows
Uupgrade?
After you upgrade to Windows 11 or Windows 10 you may notice two folders on your System
or C Drive named $Windows.~BT and $Windows.~WS. These folders are created by Windows,
during the upgrade process. The question now is – Is it safe to delete these $Windows.~BT and
$Windows.~WS folders?

To see these hidden folders, Open your File Explorer to C Drive and under View tab, check the
Show hidden files checkbox.
You will then see these two folders.

Right-click on these and select Properties. You will see that $Windows.~BT is around 625MB
and $Windows.~WS occupies around 5.6GB. So deleting these would mean reclaiming a lot of
valuable disk space.

Is it safe to delete $Windows.~BT & $Windows.~WS folders

$Windows.~BT and $Windows.~WS are temporary folders and can be safely deleted.

If you are unable to right-click on them and select Delete, you can use the following commands
to change permissions and force-delete them.

Right-click on Start button to open the WinX Menu. Select Command Prompt (Admin).

Copy-paste the following and hit Enter to delete the contents of $Windows.~BT directory

takeown /F C:\$Windows.~BT\* /R /A
icacls C:\$Windows.~BT\*.* /T /grant administrators:F
rmdir /S /Q C:\$Windows.~BT\
Now copy-paste the following and hit Enter to delete the contents of $Windows.~WS directory

takeown /F C:\$Windows.~WS\* /R /A
icacls C:\$Windows.~WS\*.* /T /grant administrators:F
rmdir /S /Q C:\$Windows.~WS\

If this works, you will see a Successfully processed message.

If this does not work the first time, or you get maybe an Access Denied message, restart your
computer and run these commands again.

If you get message “The system cannot find the file specified” it means the folder is already
deleted.
If you need to delete more files and folders after the upgrade to Windows 10, you could search
for Disk Cleanup, right-click on it, and select Run as administrator.

You will see an option Previous Windows installation. Check this option, see the other checked
options and click on Yes. This will clear up 222GB of space. When you select this option, Disk
Cleanup tool will delete the Windows.old folder as well as the $Windows.~BT folder, but not the
$Windows.~WS folder

We suggest that you delete these two $Windows.~BT and $Windows.~WS folders, along with
the Windows.old folder, only when you are sure that your Windows 11/10 installation is working
fine, and you do not plan to restore or rollback your computer. Because if you do try to, you will
receive a We’re sorry, but you can’t go back message.

Read next about the Panther folder and the $SysReset folder.

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