# Windows XP Disk Cleaner utility: How long should it take? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 8, 2004, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-xp-disk-cleaner-utility-how-long-should-it-take/268257 "2004-10-08T20:11:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-xp-disk-cleaner-utility-how-long-should-it-take/268257/1 "2004-10-08T20:11:45Z")
I’m trying to run Disk Cleaner on my hard drive, but it’s been stuck in the same place for about 4 hours. It says it’s calculating how much space I’ll be able to free up. Specifically, it’s scanning to see how much I’ll free up by compressing old files, and that’s where it’s been stuck all this time. Is this normal? Should I continue to wait? FTR I have a 20G HD with about 2.7G free. ---
**Author:** ![Flander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8c91f0/32.png) [@Flander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flander)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-xp-disk-cleaner-utility-how-long-should-it-take/268257/2 "2004-10-08T20:56:52Z")
4 hours is WAY too long. Go ahead and cancel it for now. You may want to run the diskcheck utility first to see if there are any bad sectors on the drive that might be causing the problem. You can right click on your c: drive, click properties, tool tab, and click the error-checking button. XP will ask if you want to schedule it after the next restart to which you click yes. Restart your computer if you’re not doing anything else and let it do its thing. This may take a while, so if you need to read more SDMB before you break out in cold sweats, find another computer. Are there any other problems with the computer? Slow loading or other weirdness? Do you have the lastes service packs and junk? Let us know. ---
**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-xp-disk-cleaner-utility-how-long-should-it-take/268257/3 "2004-10-08T21:00:03Z")
Microsoft KB article [812248](http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;812248) has a fix for this. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-xp-disk-cleaner-utility-how-long-should-it-take/268257/4 "2004-10-10T19:18:09Z")
Thanks to both for the responses. I’ve tried both these things. One or two bad sectors were repaired by the disk scan. Then I tried doing the fix, but Disk Cleanup didn’t come up at all. I retored the registry to its prior state, and DC will now come up, but it behaves exactly as it did. I installed the windows updates yesterday. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-xp-disk-cleaner-utility-how-long-should-it-take/268257/5 "2004-10-10T19:51:41Z")
Try deleting your temporary internet files, then deleting everything in your temp directory. For a program whose very purpose is to remove excess files from these and other directories, it does an astonishingly poor job when such a situation actually exists. ---
**Author:** ![Viscera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/258eb7/32.png) [@Viscera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Viscera)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2004, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-xp-disk-cleaner-utility-how-long-should-it-take/268257/6 "2004-10-10T23:46:02Z")
What **Nanoda** said, I had the same problem and searched Microsoft’s site, and I could’ve swore there was another walkthrough that involved going into IE and deleting some files and changing one or two things ( I couldn’t find it right now though). That fixed the problem for me.