Compress Old Files with Disk Cleanup

[Guest]

I found myself in the situation described in other posts and that is
addressed in MKB Article 812248 - after two years of working OK, Disk Cleanup
suddenely began to hang (loop, actually) in scanning for old files to
compress.

The fix recommended in the article and in other posts is to delete the
Compress Old Files registry key. That bypasses the problem but it also
appears to eliminate the ability to compress old files.

What does one lose by this and, if anything, what can be done to restore the
ability of Disk Cleanup to compress old files?

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

What is lost?
Old files are no longer compressed.
As far as I am concerned that is not a loss at all.
If space is that short, another /larger hard drive is needed anyways.

To undo it, change back the registry key, but if it hangs before, it
will most likely hang again.
There is no other fix for this issue and it seems Microsoft is unable
or unwilling to dedicate the resources to fix this.

 

[Guest]

Understood. I was never too sure about what, if anything, I gained by file
compression anyway but I always dutifully did it in the past.

I suggest that Microsoft make it more clear that the "fix" of MKB article
812248 simply disables "old file compression" and does not address the
underlying problem.

But how does one restore the key? I applied the registry edit with the
"canned" edit suggested in other posts on this subject and no backup was
taken of the previous entries.

 

[Alain Vouillon]

Bonjour,
Ezra écrivait:

Understood. I was never too sure about what, if anything, I gained
by file compression anyway but I always dutifully did it in the past.

I suggest that Microsoft make it more clear that the "fix" of MKB
article 812248 simply disables "old file compression" and does not
address the underlying problem.

But how does one restore the key? I applied the registry edit with
the "canned" edit suggested in other posts on this subject and no
backup was taken of the previous entries.

It's here
http://a.vouillon.online.fr/faq-winxp.htm#171b

http://a.vouillon.online.fr/ftp/compressnotoldfiles.reg
http://a.vouillon.online.fr/ftp/compressoldfiles.reg

For the fonction work you must have to delete much large files of your DD.

 

[Guest]

Merci, Alain... I have many large files on an 80Gb disk.