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Disk Cleanup in Win XP

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by searcher41

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Ever since I got my PC, pre-loaded with Win XP Home Edition, I have not been able to use the "Disk Cleanup" utility. I click on button, the program starts, and then simply hangs - every time. I have waited at least an hour (it is a 40GB HD) but still nothing is happening. I have had to resort to deleting files manually every now and then, but I really would prefer to get this thing working as it should.

Any ideas?

4 replies

by ann777

Who loaded WinXP Home on this machine?

Tell them of the problem you are having and see if they can send you another copy of cleanmgr.exe (it's a really small <50 KB file -- so they should be able to e-mail it to you or put it on a floppy andgive it to you). It'd be best to get the same WinXP Home edition of this file.

Put a copy of it in your Windows\system32 directory and your windows\system32\dllcache directory.

Run click on start --> run --> cleanmgr and see if it'll work.The file may have been corrupted during install or at any other time. If you have access to another XP Home computer, you should be able to copy the file to floppy and then place it on your home computer and test.

by ann777

Where/how does it "hang?" What's the last thing you see on the screen from this program?

It could take a long time to run, especially if you do not have a whole lot of free space and it is trying to Compress files.

by searcher41

Hi Anna777, thank you for your input. That could easily have been the problem. However, I have just found what the problem with this machine is, and it may be of some help to others with the same issue.

Basically, the HD is so big, that cleanmgr is trying to compress old files, which could day a very long time! A work around can be found at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;812248
which explains how to get into the registry and take out the "compress old files" key. That worked for me. I guess the thing to do now is to spend some time allowing the PC to compress the whole HD (which could take hours!) and then I won't have that problem again. Thanks anyway for your help.

Searcher41 :-)

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