While Disk Cleanup isn’t used very often on Windows, it comes in handy, and I’ve found it does a good job of getting rid of some of the things that other cleaners can’t do. In Windows 10, Disk Cleanup can be opened in several ways. In this article, I will introduce various ways to clean up your disk.
Disk Cleanup by Administrative Tools
The first way to get to Disk Cleanup is to go to Control Panel, then open Administrative Tools and click Disk Cleanup. Quite a simple but rather tedious process.
If you are still using Windows 8, you can read my previous post on how to open Control Panel in Windows 8 if you are having problems with it.
If you really use it a lot, you can right-click Disk Cleanup in Administrative Tools and select Pin to Start or Pin to Taskbar.
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Disk Cleanup via Run Dialog
Another way to do this is to open the run dialog and enter a direct executable to clean up the disk. Click Start, type Run, and press Enter. Enter Cleanmgr.exe.
Disk Cleanup via Disk Properties
You can also open File Explorer, right-click the drive you want to run Disk Cleanup on, and select Properties.
You will see the Disk Cleanup button located at the bottom right, where it shows the disk capacity.
Disk Cleanup by starting search
The easiest way to open Disk Cleanup is to simply click Start and enter Disk Cleanup. This should be the first result.
If you’re using Windows 8, the easiest way to open Disk Cleanup is to open the Charms Bar and click the Search button. Enter “Disk Cleanup” and click “Settings”.
Click Free up disk space by deleting unnecessary files. This will cause disk cleanup.
Run Extended Disk Cleanup
Windows 10 also has an advanced Disk Cleanup feature that can be launched that includes more options than what you get in the standard version. Some sites claim that the enhanced version is the same as if you clicked Clean up system files in the normal Disk Cleanup dialog, but this is not true.
When I ran Advanced Disk Cleanup, I had at least 11 additional options on my computer, and it actually cleaned up a few extra GBs that weren’t deleted even after I selected the system files option. You can go to Advanced Disk Cleanup by opening an elevated command prompt and then copy and paste the following:
cmd.exe / c Cleanmgr / sageset: 65535 & Cleanmgr / sagerun: 65535
Go ahead and check everything if you like, then click OK. It should definitely delete more files than usual. Obviously, your mileage will be different.
Troubleshoot disk cleanup errors
If you are faced with the rare case where Disk Cleanup won’t start, there are a few simple things you can try. First, try running a System File Checker scan to make sure all system files are in order. You can do this by opening a command prompt (Start – type cmd) and running the following command:
sfc / scannow
The second thing you can do is open explorer, enter% temp% in the address bar and manually delete all files and folders located there.
That’s all it takes to clean up the disk. It is a utility that has been used on Windows for a long time, and rightfully so. It does a great job of cleaning up your hard drive without installing any third party tools. Enjoy!
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