Vista - Accessing windows.old

Hi, before I used the Vista beta cd to boot to install, somehow I created
severe problems with my Sony laptop (part of the drive must've been hidden)
by using Partition Magic and resizing. Upon reboot, I could NOT get XP
back. Options to use last known good configuration, safe mode, none of the
only 4 choices available would work. I then used PM boot cd to fix anything
that might've been damaged and PM did find an Error110 I believe and it said
it fixed it but it froze then. Subsequent uses of PM still didn't fix
anything, all options greyed out, but showed 2 disks (1 harddrive tho with
serious ???NTFS???NTFS????NTFS???etc on disk1; disk 0 was small) so I
gave up & booted with Vista. Miracles began happening and I will be the
first to buy this excellent OS!

First a chkdisk took place, found errors, fixed them. Then a 20 mins. series
of "Replacing invalid security ID with default security ID" for...couple
thousand files! Then the vista splash screen and I was safely on my way to
installing vista.

I thought it would overwrite my current XP but during the install, it
mentioned that 'another version of an OS was detected and the files would be
stored in a file called Windows.old'. Once vista installed, I found the
Windows.old folder, hovering showed 458mb size but viewing properties, the
size is 7.5gb. I would like to move that folder off the internal drive to
an external.

Can this be done without affecting Vista?

TIA for any help........katy

Hello,

Yes in a clean install of Windows Vista (you did not upgrade), Windows.old
is just a backup of your previous windows folders. It is safe to move or
delete, as long as you do not need any information from it.

- JB