Windows XP Tweak: Speed up Disk Cleanup

Have you ever noticed how running disk cleanup has become a time consuming process? The reason for this is that the disk cleanup utility has to scan your entire system in search of old files that you may wish to compress. In my opinion, you should not compress any files on your system for one reason, if you ever need those files in the future, it can take twice as long to read them. Ultimately succeding in slowing down your computer.

So in this edition of "Windows XP Tweaks" we are going to teach you how to disable "Compress old files" in Disk Cleanup. In order to perform this tweak we have to edit your systems registry. As always I suggest that all users backup their registry before making any changes to it. For more information on your system registry and backing it up, please visit The System Registry.

• Step 1: Click the "Start" menu and then click "Run...".
• Step 2: In the text box type "regedit" and press "OK".

• Step 3: In the left frame of the window that appears is a "file" tree. We need to navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\Volume Caches
  To do this we are going to click the "plus" sign next to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE", then the "plus" sign next to "SOFTWARE", and etc... till we reach "Volume Caches".

• Step 4: In the left frame we are going to right click on the entry under "Volume Caches" named "Compress Old Files" and select "Delete".
• Step 5: Reboot the computer and run Disk Cleanup.

Till next time, Ciao.

--Doc