Windows 7: Articles

The Disk Cleanup tool is an extremely useful tool, especially now that Internet usage is so highly popular.

The cleaning out of junk files inside temporary internet folders and the Recycle Bin is a task that you should do regularly if you want to keep your computer running at optimum performance.

Accessing the Disk Cleanup tool requires you to locate it (many are not aware that there is such a tool) through the drive’s properties window or by using Start menu and navigating to find it. There is a way to work around going through all those steps and just right-click your drive and “Disk Cleanup” will be included.

This guide will help you hack the registry to add the option on your drive right-click menu.

Manually Changing The Registry
Before you proceed, it is important to know that you should be careful in altering the registry, as the changes made will be permanently reflected on your system.

The registry is a very easy thing to break! Do not change any of the keys other than the one we are about to describe, otherwise your actions will almost certainly result in errors appearing.

To change the registry, open it up by clicking the Start menu and type “regedit” where it says “search” or “run”. Once inside the registry, in the left pane, navigate through until you locate the following key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell

Create a new registry by right-clicking on the right pane, select New and then click Key. Rename the key as “diskcleanup” and set the default value as “Disk Cleanup”, which will show in the right-click menu.

Afterwards, inside the diskcleanup key, create another key underneath it by using the same steps above and naming it “command”. This time set the value of the key as “cleanmgr.exe /d %1”.

You can exit the registry window and check to see if the changes have taken effect. Go to My Computer and simply right-click on any drive, and you should be able to see “Disk Cleanup” in the menu.



Now, let’s just check the Disk Cleanup shortcut on your drive’s menu is working. To clean up your disk, simply click Disk Cleanup and you should be asked if you want to clean up just your personal files or all of the files from every user of the computer.



It is better to select the files from all users to effectively cleanup your drive. Disk cleanup will start by calculating the amount of disk space you will gain from doing so, and you’ll need to wait for it to finish.



Once the program has finished calculating, you will be presented with a list of options that you can choose whether or not to include in the disk cleanup process. Once you tick the check box of a list item, you will see how much space you will gain for that item.

To free up the maximum space in this process, select all of the choices by ticking all the check boxes and clicking on OK. You can also select the More Options tab and you can clean up System Restore and Shadow Copies to gain even more free space.