Disk Cleanup utility

Question

Here's the situation:

Everytime I run Disk Cleanup, it never ever completes. The status bar does not go anywhere beyond two little green ticks, or "Compacting Files". I have another Login on my computer that I used to use just for Disk Cleanup, but it also has this problem now. After I cancel the program, it still continues to use up processing power and memory.

Basically, Disk Cleanup doesn't complete and I can't delete the useless junk from my computer automatically. It uses around 98% of my P4 2.0GHz's processing power which is rather irritating. I have to manually end the process through Windows Task Manager. Any ideas? Help is appreciated.

Alex - yetieater

joat77 · Answer

Have you tried manually deleting some of the files.  If not delete ALL cookies and files in the Temp Internet Explorer folder by clicking on TOOLS, INTERNET OPTIONS (within IE 6) and click on the buttons.  Then do a file find on the TEMP folders.  You can almost always delete EVERYTHING in these folder that you find.  Each user on your system will have one.  Then try to run the disk cleanup (or cleanmgr from the Run command box) and uncheck the compress files box to get everything else.  It sounds like you may have a lot of removable files and compressible files.  This is why the program is taking so long.

Sadamson27 · Answer

slash808,

Try the links below to see if they solve your problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;823302&Product=winxp

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;812930&Product=winxp

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;812248&Product=winxp

JRosenfeld · Answer

Unless you actually want to compress old files, I recommend the second link given by Sadamson27. However, I would suggest is that, before deleting the key as mentioned in the article, that you export and save it somewhere convenient. That way, should you later decide that you do want ton compress old files, you can easily merge it back into the registry. To do that, once you have opened regedit and navigated to the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Compress Old Files

as mentioned in the article, left click on it to highlight it, File menu, export, give the file a name such as compress old files.reg (save as registration file with reg extension) in some folder of your choice. To restore that key in the registry all you need do is double click on the file you created.

Denny Denham · Answer

slash808, If you are not comfortable with editing the registry (as prescribed by the second link), the file here will do it for you.

slash808 · Answer

I periodically clear out all of my old files from IE6.  I just deleted everything in the Temp directory, and I will try using Disk Cleanup again.

slash808 · Answer

Thanks to everyone for your help - my Disk Cleanup utility is working again.  I decided against deleting the key through Regedit because I don't see much of a performance decrease with compressed files.  I just cleared out everything from the Temp folder...Some of that stuff is really old.  Several gigabytes more of free space now.  Thanks :D

Windows General

Disk Cleanup utility

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