System gets "hung up" when using Disk Cleanup.

[Steeda]

Whenver I try to use the Disk Cleanup utility under "System Tools", I get a pop-up box that says, " Disk cleanup is calculating how much space you will be able to free on [C:]". In the bottom left corner of the box it says "Calculating", and then "Scanning: Compress old files."

Now only problem is, it sits at this stage in the pop-up box without actually doing the disk cleanup. I have let it go for nearly 2 hours before thinking maybe it just takes some time to scan whatever it needs to scan. Now, I haven't done a disk cleanup in a very long time on this machine, could that have something to do with it ? Should I just let it sit until it finishes scanning ?

[Mobo]

It's probably hanging on the "compressed folders" scan and if you do a ctrl-alt-del you may see "cleanmgr" consuming up to 99% of cpu time. You can end-task that.

But to correct the problem you have to do a little registry work.

Go to Start>Run and enter regedit

Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer\Volum
eCaches\Compress old files

With the Compress old files key highlighted, click File and Export. Name and save the key to a convenient folder. Then Right Click on it and delete it.

You will probably have to reboot afterwards. Try Disk Cleanup, it should breeze through where it hung up previously. Afterwards, you can doubleclick the saved .reg entry to merge it back to the registry.