Make Disk Cleanup work faster
Windows XP comes with a useful utility called Disk Cleanup that helps to keep unnecessary temporary files from accumulating. (I discuss the details of using this utility at this link.) However, systems with NTFS disks often run into a problem with the utility being very slow or hanging for a long time. This is caused by the default setting in Disk Cleanup that checks to see if it should apply file compression to old files. It’s odd that Microsoft has not changed this setting; for one thing file compression is generally not needed on today’s large disks. Even more to the point, the procedure often just makes the system stop responding.
The solution is to edit the Registry as described in this Microsoft article. Open Regedit and delete this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Compress old files
If Registry editing is not your cup of tea, you can use a REG file that can be downloaded here. The file comes with the usual disclaimer that it is provided as is and the user is responsible for any results. Back up the Registry before doing any editing.
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