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    • XP Tip: Disk Cleanup

    When using Disk Cleanup to remove unneeded files the hard drive is searched for old files that could be compressed to free more space. This search does take significant time and the compression feature is often not used due to various reasons, most of all because one can not choose what to compress and what not to compress.

    A simple change in the registry will remove the Compress Old Files option and speed things drastically up.

    To do so just delete the following key: 

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Compress old files
    Of course making sure to backup that key by exporting it in case you ever want to restore that feature. From what I have seen the content of the key seems to be the same across different computers, including XP Home vs. XP Professional but don't count on that. Since that might be true I included the registry file of that key.
    Page last modified: October 19, 2004
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