Disk Cleaner Freeware

[Dave]

I downloaded a freeware disk cleaner called CM Disk
Cleaner. I found that it discovers more junk files to
remove than does JV16 power tools. It also finds zero byte
files, and broken shortcuts. Some that other cleaners
don't find.
My question is, will I ever get in trouble deleting a zero
byte file? This thing has found numerous of them and I
would like to delete them if I can.
Thanks for your reply

 

[Thorsten Matzner]

I downloaded a freeware disk cleaner called CM Disk
Cleaner. I found that it discovers more junk files to
remove than does JV16 power tools. It also finds zero byte
files, and broken shortcuts. Some that other cleaners
don't find.
My question is, will I ever get in trouble deleting a zero
byte file? This thing has found numerous of them and I
would like to delete them if I can.

If in doubt, move the file to a new folder and keep it there for a
while. If Windows or an application is missing the file you can copy
it back.
In general: Windows will not allow to delete files that are currently
in use. The core files are protected also on a way that if a file is
lost it will be rebuild automatically.
For additional safety check if you can tell the cleaner only to delete
files that have not been in use for 1-2 days.

 

[jargonize]

i'ed be careful, used something like that once, had to
reformat, it deleted one or two things i needed. and as
said, sometimes windows will just rebuild the files
anyway.

 

[Donald Link]

Sometime a problem can occur. Probably the best thing to do is move them to
a working temp directory and see if any problems occur for a couple of weeks
or more. Could even copy them to a cdrom for junk files.

 

[David Candy]

There are a number of standard 0 byte files. Send to has a few. By naming files with special names you can make them behave as other objects such as shell commands. There is no point in having any data in a file that gets it's magic from it's name, hence they are 0 byte.

 

[David Candy]

You can extend the inbuilt cleaner.

Here's one I just made that does *.fred in c:\desktop if more than 2 days since last accessed.
Merge the file then look here in the registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\CustomDeleter
and alter the path and filetype (I didn't want to delete my hard drive by mistake as 98 disk cleanup threatened to do if you customised parameters). Also as the path is an Expand type it's in hex in the regfile and in english in the reg (because regfiles don't support expand so it uses hex). If using environmental variables the data type must be expand.

I created a file called New Text Document.Fred, set my clock forward, and it deleted. It didn't delete unless I set the clock forward so it shows the time is working (note it is last access not modified or created).

To use
cleanmgr /sageset:<a number>
and only tick the Customer Deleter
This sets it up

Then to run or schedule
cleanmgr /sagerun:<same number used above>

You can have as many pairs of sageset/run as you want.