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@jaxn99 wrote:

My computer is running slower than it ever has.  I am running Windows XP, and have only very few programs loaded.  It says I have about 27 GB total and using only 21 with 77% free space.  But, when I went to "disk Clean-up" the little box that shows how much free space can be made, the little box just freezes.  It does say that this can take a few minutes but after 20 minutes NOTHING happens (this is the little box with the little broom.)  So, I restarted my computer and tried it again, with the same result. 

Before I had done this, I did uninstall some of the programs that I never use but I don't think they would affect Windows tasks would they?  I do have Kazaa loaded on my computer, could that program be making my internet and computer in general run this much slower????

I used to use the disk clean up a lot and never had a problem with it!!  Anyone know what I can do to fix this????

~Jackie

Yes, Kazaa will slow your machine down and your internet access also as you've opened your computer to people all over the world to pull things off your hard drive.  When they do that, it slows down.

Try booting into Safe Mode (F8 on Startup) to get Disk Cleanup to work.

jaxn99,
To get disk cleanup to work at this point you're going to have to delete a registry subkey called Compress Old Files. To do so open Regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Volume Caches. You'll see the Compress Old Files subkey once you expand Volume Caches. Delete it then restart your computer and disk cleanup will operate correctly.

This is the fix, but you might want to export the "Compress Old Files" key first. Then delete all the entries in that key bu leave the key itself.