Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

Disk Cleanup

Synopsis

Deletes unnecessary files from your disks.

To Launch

• Start → Programs → Accessories → System → Disk Cleanup

• Windows Explorer or My Computer → right-click on a drive → Properties → General → Disk Cleanup

• Computer Management → Storage → Disk Management → right-click on a drive → Properties → General → Disk Cleanup

• Command interpreter → cleanmgr.exe

Description

If you run Disk Cleanup using the first method listed earlier, you must first specify the drive (partition, volume, or logical drive) you want to clean up. Disk Cleanup will then calculate how much free space can be recovered from the drive (if the drive is large and has many files, this could take a few minutes).

At this point Disk Cleanup opens as a property sheet with two tabs. The key settings here are:

Disk Cleanup

Specifies one or more cleanup operations to perform on your disk. These operations include deleting downloaded program files such as Java applets and ActiveX controls, deleting temporary Internet files (cached web pages and images), deleting other temporary files such as *.tmp files or files stored in a \temp folder, emptying the Recycle Bin, and compressing old files that you have not accessed for some specified time interval (the default is 50 days). For each operation, the space you can gain by running Disk Cleanup is displayed. You can also view the names of files before you delete them.

More Options

Removes any optional Windows components or installed programs that you deem unnecessary. This ...