Practicing the Black Art (07/08)
Using Vista’s Hidden Disk Cleanup Options
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@comcast.net
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
There are many things to like
about the disk cleanup utility in Windows Vista. It’s built into the
operating system, it works and it’s free. It’s also a tool that removes
many potential problems such as corrupt files that may be causing
difficulties or could cause computer ills in the future. One of its
minor shortcomings is that it doesn’t detect and eliminate wasteful
duplicate files. This is a very insignificant quibble as Microsoft never
claimed it could do that in the first place. That ability is an item on
my wish list for the next version. Overall it’s a very useful tool that
everyone should be familiar with.
There is more to Disk Cleanup than removing junk files and recovering
gigabytes of disk space. It’s amazing how ‘temporary’ files can hang
around for months in the little used crannies of a disk drive. Poorly
written install and uninstall routines are largely responsible, but
software glitches and power hiccups leave their own share of digital
detritus laying about.
Systems with more than a terabyte of storage are becoming common, and
it’s easy to lose track of even the largest files. Try locating a
suitcase sized patch of land in an area with the dimensions of a
football field and you’ll have an idea of what I’m talking about. Aside
from taking up space, these useless files can slow down searches, bloat
your backups, and make Vista’s slow defrag process even slower.
If you’re not familiar with how Disk Cleanup works, you can access a
good tutorial by clicking the Start icon, and then Help and Support. In
the search box type Disk Cleanup, and you will get a list of items
directly and indirectly related to the subject. You want the first three
or four items in the list.
Let’s access the normal version of Disk Cleanup by opening up the
Computer icon on the Desktop, right-clicking the C: drive, and choosing
Properties.
On the General tab locate the Disk Cleanup button just below and to
the right of the disk graphic. You might want to make a note of how much
used and unused disk space you have for a before and after comparison.
Left-click on the Disk Cleanup button and you will get a message that
Windows is doing some calculations. Eventually, you get a dialog box
which displays various categories of files you can remove. Windows will
let you peek at many of these files, but it’s largely a waste of time.
I’ve never found anything worth examining. Make a note of how many types
of files Windows can remove, and then close all the dialog boxes.
You’ve just seen the standard way to access Disk Cleanup. Let’s now
examine Disk Cleanup with its deep cleaning options exposed. Vista’s
official file name for the Disk Cleanup utility is cleanmgr. Open the
Start globe again and type cleanmgr on the Start Search box at the
bottom of the menu. Press Enter and The Drive Selection dialog box
appears. This is a great way to eliminate mouse clicks if we want a fast
way of getting to a specific drive. However, this method doesn’t display
the extra functions we’re looking for so close the dialog box down.
To access the enhanced options we need to use something called the
System Agent or sage in conjunction with cleanmgr. Click the Start globe
again and in the Start Search box type
Cleanmgr /sageset:1
Notice the space between cleanmgr and the forward slash. Sageset is a
variation of the System Agent utility, and the number 1 allows you to
select different cleaning options. You can use any number you want, even
zero or negative numbers.
Disk Cleanup will now be running in a special setup mode that offers
more cleaning options than the standard default. In addition, the System
Agent will remember whatever cleanup options you select. When you run
Cleanup again you don’t have to make the same selections as long as you
use the same number. That’s what the System Agent set part does.
Press Enter to run the utility and wait for the Disk Cleanup Settings
dialog box to appear. Highlight the individual cleanup options and in
some cases there is additional information that is missing from the
default dialog box. You also have more cleanup options.
You can select any number of options from just one to all of them. For
maximum cleaning, select everything. When you’re satisfied with the
options you’ve selected, click the OK button and run the utility. When
the job is done, go back and see how much disk space you’ve recovered.
You could be in for a pleasant surprise.
We used the sageset command to set the cleanup options. The system
keeps track of what you’ve done, and it will run the utility according
to your specification in the future, but you can’t use the sageset
command for that. You need to ignore sageset and run the sagerun command
instead. From the desktop click the Start globe, and in the Search box
type:
Cleanmge /sagerun:1
Press Enter and the system will automatically run in enhanced mode
with the preference previously recorded. Run this command anytime you
wish from now on. You can always change preferences by rerunning the
sageset command with the cleanmgr utility.
Chances are good that a lot of clutter will be removed from your
system, and you will see an increase in free space on your system. If
you wish to automate the process, you can use the Task Scheduler to run
the tool automatically at your convenience. :
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Copyright 2008. This article is from the July 2008 issue of the
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