Microsoft goes on to say that 'cloud only' OneDrive files are not affected by this particular bug. Remote resets might be initiated from Mobile Device Management (MDM) or other management applications, such as Microsoft Intune or third-party tools.' 'This issue might be encountered when attempting a manual reset initiated within Windows or a remote reset. 'When attempting to reset a Windows device with apps which have folders with reparse data, such as OneDrive or OneDrive for Business, files which have been downloaded or synced locally from OneDrive might not be deleted when selecting the “Remove everything” option,' Microsoft explained. Always double-check the contents of the drive after wiping, as you might not only find your old files in Windows.old but also on other storage hardware installed in your PC / laptop. Then a wipe-free space utility might be useful to make sure any sensitive data can't be recovered using any undelete style utilities. If you must reset or refresh a PC soon, you could just restart the reset / refreshed device and go into Windows to check for and delete the Windows.old files manually. Hopefully Microsoft will step up and fix this faulty behaviour in the coming weeks, so you don't need to remember to run third party scripts. One needs to run the script ahead of wiping / resetting your old device. Ooms has kindly put together a PowerShell Script to fix this security blunder by Microsoft. It was also noted that OneDrive files, which had been marked as 'Always Keep on this device' in Windows previously, remained in Windows.old too. However, when a device is wiped, Bitlocker is removed, and he discovered that the Windows.old folder contained previously encrypted data, now non-encrypted. In his blog post, Oooms notes that some users might feel assured that their personal data was always stored on a Bitlocker drive. (Image credit: Rudy Ooms ) Bitlocker Protection Is Also Removed This is despite Microsoft warning users ahead of the action that 'This removes all personal and company data and settings from this device.' The most common issue was the leaving behind of user data in a folder called Windows.old on the 'wiped' or 'fresh start' disk.

Ooms installed and tested these four OSes, with local and remote wipe operations, then checked the results.

At the bottom of the table you can see that both Wipe and Fresh Start options appear to work as expected in Windows 10 and 11 version 21H1, but are ineffectual in versions 21H2.

Disk wipe