If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, this post is not for you.
However, if you are running Windows XP, when you run Disk Cleanup (My Computer, right click on a disk drive, then click Properties), you may see a message “Scanning: compress old files”. Back in the day so very small disak drives, this may have been a somewhat useful option. More importantly, it takes a long time for this scanning process to complete.
My recommendation is not to compress old files. And with a quick registery edit, you can disable this option so it does not run when you do a disk clean up, and no reboot of your workstation is required.
- From a command propmpt, type regedit and press enter.
- Drill down HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > VolumeCaches > Compress old files
- In the right pane double click the {Default} key and the Edit String window will display. The Value Data field will contain a long 32 character string, similar to: {B50F5260-0C21-11D2-AB56-00A0C9082678} (see screenshot).
- Delete the entire 32 character string in the Value Data field, then click OK, and close the Regedit window.
That’s it! Now, when you run disk cleanup, you will no longer get the ‘Scanning: compress old files’.