Disk cleanup tool stops responding while compressing old files

Sorry this didn't help. Thanks for your feedback. I personally do not compress files and probably never will - if necessary, I'll just get a larger hard drive or another hard drive or an external hard drive. As long as you compress only the correct files not your boot files or anything like that , I suppose it's safe enough - but they take longer to open - not a lot but some and it depends on the size they need to decompress and there's always a risk when doing something like that that some form of corruption will occur which gets us back to the old mythology but the risk is generally considered minimal and I don't mean to overstate it - but it does exist.

Opinions vary between the experts and you'll get them from either end of the spectrum. Some will tell you it is perfectly safe and a good way to save space on your hard drive. Others will take a middle road and say they aren't positive but think it is safe but recognize that there are exceptions.

You may see some responses like that posted here. I mean I would never use the generic disk cleanup compress old files option to do it on a somewhat global basis with no individual selection and when I do do it with an individual file, it is quite rare - I probably haven't done so in over a month - and to be perfectly honest, when I do compress a file for e-mailing, I first make a copy and compress the copy and retain the original uncompressed.

I've also seen situations here where people have compressed their boot files along with pretty much everything else and this has caused them a lot of grief - it's not an easy process to repair and the system won't boot with those files compressed I'm not sure how they did it - I just saw the posts but didn't read the threads - but if there's any chance that the Disk Cleanup compression was involved and I don't think so but I didn't read how it happened and so I suppose it is possible , then that's just another reason for me to stay away.

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Delete the Compress old files registry key. Quit Registry Editor. Click to expand Similar threads. Windows error. Replies 4 Views 1K. Aug 10, necee Speed up loading DVD with hughe numbers of files that contains totally new unknown icons for windows. Look for a key called Compress old files. Right click on the key and select Export. Click on the Desktop icon on the left of the Export Registry File dialog box.

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