C Disk Cleanup Windows 10
Kate Kokenge
If you're just looking to free up disk space, consider using Azure File Sync with cloud tiering enabled. This method lets you cache your most frequently accessed files locally and tier your least frequently accessed files to the cloud, saving local storage space while maintaining performance. For more information, see Planning for an Azure File Sync deployment.
To launch Disk Cleanup, type disk clean or cleanmgr.exe into the Start menu search box. The Disk Cleanup desktop app should appear at the top of those search results. If you can, select Run as administrator from the resulting options menu. Why? Only then does it offer to clean up redundant or outdated OS files (such as old OS files after an upgrade, or old updates) as well as other Windows leftovers.
Most Windows OS files reside in the WinSxS folder, also known as the Component Store. After you install a cumulative update, and sometimes after other updates, the Component Store may contain duplicate, obsolete, or orphaned elements. You can use the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool at the command line to check the Component Store from time to time. Such checks will tell you if a cleanup is needed.
Disk Cleanup searches your disk and then shows you temporary files, Internet cache files, and unnecessary program files that you can safely delete. You can direct Disk Cleanup to delete some or all of those files. This tool guides you through a series of tasks and systematic procedures to help you get back to work quickly.
To get "Disk Cleanup" to show up as a button on a disk drive's Properties dialog box, you have to change the registry to add a new key and "Expandable String Value". Create a new .reg text file and paste in the following:
While you can search for temporary files yourself and delete them manually, you save time by using the Windows disk cleanup tool. You can search your entire hard disk for specific files within a matter of seconds with the disk cleanup utility. The tool also gives you greater control over which files to delete and those to keep. When outdated application files are removed from your system, it runs more smoothly and has fewer crashes.
While this is a pretty simplified description of the WinSxS folder, the general idea I want to convey here is that the WinSxS folder can grow so large that it takes up a good chunk of hard disk space. The problem gets compounded by the fact that the WinSxS folder is used to store so many files. This means that old files as well as files that are no longer necessary can still be taking up hard disk space.
For instance, Figure A shows the WinSxS folder properties dialog on a system that began as a Windows 7 system, which was upgraded to Windows 8.x and again to Windows 10. As you can see, the WinSxS folder on this system contains 60,209 files and takes up a grand total of 6.73 GB of hard disk space.
I have VMWare 3.1.3 using it to run Windows XP on a Summer 2009 iMac with 8GB of RAM and 1TB of disk (partitioned). I'm in a cycle where after a couple weeks VMWare says it needs more disk space. The space for Windows XP is on a virtual disk partion and it's size is about 194 GB. The local C drive for Windows XP is showing about the same amount of space or 134GB of free space and 60 of used space. So it appears I need to reduce the disk size for the C drive so that I can make everything fit on the 194GB partition.
When I go to the Settings panel and click on HDD there is a message at the top saying "These settings cannot be changed while disk cleanup is recommended. To make these changes, first click the Clean Up Disk button." When I do this the pop up panel warns about cleanup taking a long time. I click the Clean Up button and it pops up with "Cleaning deleted files ..." and then quickly stops with no messages and the same warning message at the top of the HDD panel.
Under Windows I have run Disk Defrag after getting rid of several files to free up space on the C drive. The Disk Defrag panel shows files (used space) spread all across the disk. And I have used Virtual Machine Snapshots to remove all snap shots. So now no snapshots show under the Snapshot window.
I've been reading through the forums and following the documentation but nothing seems work. And I've become confused and overwhelmed with information. I've been working on this since last week and I'm just spinning my wheels with little to show for the time and effort. When I started having the problem, the VMWare file holding Windows XP was about 190GB and now its about 225GB. Evertime when I got a little more space I could start using VMWare/Windows XP but after a few hours of light usage, bang I'm back getting the need more disk spacemessage out of VMWare. I've been able to free up a little disk space but I've run out of that option so I'm stuck. I sure wish I could find some help! A bummer.
It is hard to know why your WinXP VM is so large, but generally, 'growable' or 'sparse' disks start at a certain size (on your Mac HD). Windows 'guest' OS would see a larger size, which is the maximum size.
I checked the activity monitor and found VM-Ware running a small percent of the time and vmware-vmx in red and showing "not responding". At that point I killed vmware-vmx and then VM-Ware and the HD Panel immediately ended. The HD panel is still pointing to "file:///Volumes/Windows%20XP/Windows%20XP%20Professional.vmwarevm/Windows%20XP%20Professional-000005.vmdk" with the message at the top of the panel saying "These settings can not be changed while disk cleanup is recommended. To make these changes, first click the Clean Up Disk Button." When I click on the "Clean Up disk" button it starts up with the same progress bar saying "Cleaning up deleted files" but stops within a few seconds with no messages. As far as I can tell nothing has changed and I get the same response when clicking on the "Clean Up Disk" button each time. When I check for snapshots Panel it shows there are no snapshots.
To make myself clear, I'h not using vmware-vdiskmanager tool in the VMWare Fusion folder instead I'm using the Settings HD Panel with VMware. The "Windows XP Professional.vmwarevm" file has not changed as far as I can tell. It is still 229GB.
I found a solution and a better understanding of the disk space problem. I bought an external drive, copied the VMWare file for my XP Windows machine to it, then brought up VMWare and opened the file on the new drive. First thing I did was go to the Settings HDD panel and ran "Clean Up Disk" It ran successfully but took about two and a half hours to complete with a progress bar showing for the duration. The size of the VMWare XP Windows file was at 228 GB when I started the Clean Up Files process. During the process the file grew to about 245GB and then at the completion it came down to about 130GB.
Then I started up the new machine and did two more things. I ran a third party disk defrag and optimizer on the C drive. Then I used the VM Ware tools (from within Windows XP) to Shrink the VMWare machine file. There's two steps to this. First you use the "Prepare to Shrink" button which took about an hour or so to run showing a progress bar. Then you click the OK button. Again this took an hour or so to run if I remember correctly. At the end, the size of the VMWare file dropped all the way down to 38GB. After a little bit of use the file jumped to 48GB and now after another day it is at 51GB.
So the machine grows over time for one reason or another. Periodically you need to do the Clean Up Files thing from the Setting HDD panel. And then periodically do a disk defrag a and then use the VM tools to do a Shrink to keep the file from growing beyond whatever disk space there is available. Keep in mind VMWare needs to be able to grow the machine file when doing the Clean Up Files. If there is not enough disk space for it to finish it quits silently with no info explaning why it has not completed the disk files.
I found no simple clearcut explanation and instructions to address the disk space growing problem. Instead I found mounds and mounds of postings and documents covering several years and versions of VMWare Fusion that were confusing and useless. And when posting to this forum I got only one response with suggestions meant to help. I'd say there needs to be a lot of work done to clean up the forums - get rid of old and duplicate postings and have a really focued troubleshooting guide. And every product needs its own trouble shooting guide even if the explabnation and procedures are the same across different products.
If you don't clean your computer, before long you'll encounter low disk space warnings and notice it slowing down. Let's walk through how to clean Windows 10 (and Windows 11) using a step-by-step plan with a variety of tools for different situations.
Windows 10 and 11 include a pair of similar tools for clearing out old temporary files from your disk, meaning you don't need a dedicated Windows cleaner app. They're a great first stop on your Windows cleanup journey.
If you don't mind an old-school interface, the classic Disk Cleanup tool gets the cleaning job done. Access it by typing Disk Cleanup into the Start menu and selecting the disk you want to clean.
Windows 10 and Windows 11 both include much of this same functionality of Disk Cleanup, with a nicer interface, at Settings > System > Storage. You can use the Storage Sense feature found there to automatically clean up files when your disk space is low, or every so often. Click Configure Storage Sense or run it now (on Windows 10) to change these options.
Once installed, search for TreeSize on the Start Menu and launch it using the (Administrator) link so you can scan everywhere. To start, choose Select Directory in the top-left and select your main storage disk.
If you haven't taken the time to remove bloatware from your system, you should. It's an important part of Windows 10 cleanup. See our guide to removing bloatware from Windows 10 for instructions. If you're on Windows 11, see instructions for removing bloatware in Windows 11.
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