stuart test blog

The Disk Cleanup tool can be incredibly useful but is often underutilised. Here are some tips I’ve picked up that can help you utilise the tool to its fullest.

• Launch the tool quickly by opening the Run command (Start -> Run or Win Key + R) and type: “cleanmgr” (without quotes)
• To configure the settings to be used while running the tool as scheduled task or in  script, open the Run command and type: “cleanmgr /sageset:1” (This creates a profile that contains the settings.)
• To configure additional profiles, just increment the 1 as needed such as: “cleanmgr /sageset:2” and “cleanmgr /sageset:3”
• To run the Disk Cleanup tool with one of the profiles that you have configured, use: “cleanmgr /sagerun:1” (or the number of the profile that you created.)
• If you find that the Disk Cleanup tool is hanging on the “Compress old files” action, follow the instructions in Microsoft’s KB812248 which says to delete the “Compress Old Files” key from the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches” registry key. Don’t forget to backup the section of the registry first, by clicking on the key and choosing the Export option.

Let me know in the comments if you have any other tips that you’d like to share.