Windows XP forum: Disk Cleanup Not Working (taking hours to compress files)

What Steven may have done to find this is to read the last communication you must have gotten from the program "Scanning: Compress old files" and type that into his search engine. This is usually how I find Microsoft Knowledge Base (MS KB) entries that help me solve my problems. There will be various other kinds of information that may or may not be helpful, but to make it quick and from the horse's mouth, just look under the page descriptions of the search engine results for the web address that starts off:
http://support.microsoft.com/...yadda.yadda....

I followed the instructions on the Microsoft page that was in the previous post and it told me to move the registy key to the desktop. I did that, and ran the cleanup and it worked perfectly. Now, I'm just wondering if I am able to delete the registy now. If anyone knows please get back to me! Thanks for all of your great posts!

Well, What are important things need to be clean up?

vanmol, Did you restart your computer after you reinstalled the registry backup? If you followed the instructions from the Microsoft link correctly your Disk Cleanup should still work.

Tufenuf

vanmol, Let us know how you make out with the problem. The easiest solution to that problem is in this thread at the link below.

http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6142-0.html?forumID=5&threadID=64364&messageID=764637

Tufenuf

wildflower52, If you're not comfortable editing the registry an easy solution to that problem is to go to the link below and scroll down to 48 and you'll see the "Disk Cleanup - Compress Old Files Freezes" Fix in the right column, download it and run it which should correct your problem.
Just click on the words "Disk Cleanup-Compress Old Files Freezes" not the underscored word "Undo".
"To use the Regedits: Save the REG File to your hard disk. Double click it and answer yes to the import prompt.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Tufenuf

Go to [http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm] ,then click on "tweaks".You get a page full of very helpful scripts to customize or fix XP. The one you want is on line 48,the right hand side.You can get the fix or "undo" there. I too had this problem and went searching for a "cure",and finally came across Kelly's Corner. What a find!!!So just download the script and run,restart and no more problem. Hope this site helps you as much as it did me.
Frank

I enountered the same problem and just lived with it (literally not using "Disk Cleanup) until I found a very effective registry patch at
http://aumha.org/win5/. After installing the patch, I was able to use the cleanup app as before.

However, this patch did not work (for me) after installing "Office 2003 Standard," but I was able to get around the problem by starting in Safe Mode and running Cleanup from there.

This last idea came by way of "Tweakhound," which has a number of XP tweaks and fixes that work well.

Thanks for all of your help. I ended up removing the registry key and the problem was immediatly solved!

THANKS A MILLION!

In my experience the easiest way to allow the Disk Cleanup function to work without hesitatin is to enter your system in Safe Mode and then run the cleanup function.

Chances are good that you've got a lot of junk on your system.
1. Get CCleaner and run it through. It's freeware.
2. Run disk defragmenter on your disk. This DOES take
a lot of time under the best conditions and I would
not be suprised at an hour.
3. Uninstall all program that you never use. You know
which ones they are.
4. Run CCleaner again.
5. Now try Disk Cleanup.

If you rarely boot, do so. Shut down and power down
manually, then start your system fresh. It does wonders.

Good Luck--1101doc