Disk cleanup

[firubbi]

after deleting tons of files windows remember/keep track of those files. is it possible to "turn off" this feature coz disk cleanup took lot of time.
thanks

[at0m]

Press Win-Pause > System Restore > Turn off System Restore on all drives. Make sure you still know how to fix missing system files after that (by backups, manual fixes from command line or whatever suits you) in case something goes wrong.

Also, Windows (and programs) use temporary folders to store files. Find out where by Win-Pause > Advanced > Environment Variables > TEMP and TMP folders in both "User Variables" and "System Variables". You can try emptying these folders, Windows will prevent some files from being deleted because they are in use, but the other ones can go.
You can also edit the Temp folders path there. I like to set 4 times the same Temp folder on a physical disk which is normally not used intensively during music production, and which hasn't got the Virtual Memory file (that one gets my fastest spare disk, see Win-Pause > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced > Virtual memory > Change)

Also, Windows 'prefetch'es files, this means, most often used programs are copied to $windir/Prefetch, for faster access they say. (!?) You can safely empty that directory once in a while if that makes you happy. Mind you, it will fill up again as you use different programs.

Is that what you're after? I think those are the most common places stuff accumulates during the life of a Windows machine...

[zangsta]

is it the indexing service you are thinking about ? Turning it of is good for general speed-up of system, it´s something I do at once when setting up a system. Control panel, services something....I forget the specifics, but you get the idea !

[FrancisHarmany]

start -> run -> msconfig

helps with disabling things.

[firubbi]

Thanks atom, zangsta. FrancisHarmany

[at0m]

start -> run -> msconfig

helps with disabling things.

That's good for disabling excess startup apps, like adobe or java update apps, or onboard soundcard applets. Don't disable Services from there - go to Computer Management for that!
But, firubbi, what were you after again, specifically?

[valis]

I use CCleaner instead of the msconfig utility for disabling startup apps. Msconfig annoys me with the silly & confusing message it gives on next boot (since I typically just manually kill processes and forget that I've run msconfig to remove entries.) Plus I like the ability to 'disable' entries easily (without digging them out of the registry and altering their entry manually) so they don't load but each time the software updates it doesn't re-add the entry for qtloader/jscheduler/ipodhelper/etc. CCleaner does this via Tools (on left) then Startup.

If you're on Vista/Win7 you'll need to set it to launch with elevated (admin) privs via its shortcut.

[firubbi]

firubbi, what were you after again, specifically?

hi atom, i wanted to turn off the "windows brain" so that after deleting anything from recycle bin it will be like permanent delete. windows will not remember or keep track. machine will be faster ( i guess) usually i forgot to run disk cleanup everyday so afte a week or 2 it takes long time to clean. that's way i was thinking if....

thanks

[valis]

I usually just use shift+delete, but there are utilities that can change the default behaviour like TweakUI etc (I think it's just a registry key & reboot to be honest.)