I'm trying to run a Disk Cleanup on a Win2K partition (My Computer, rt-click and choose Properties of the partition, click Disk Cleanup button). But having clicked on the button, the initial analysis by Windows of the amount of files that could be ditched seems to take for ever and, having tried it three times, I've had to cancel the initial analysis and therefore the cleanup, as the hard drive just seems to be constantly frantically reorganising files in order to do the calculations. Is there a known issue of this in Win2K, as the same operation on a WinXP partition on the same hard drive runs troublefree?

Both partitions are NTFS. Admittedly, the used degree of the Win2K partition is 6.6GB. But the initial analysis on the 2.6GB WinXP partition took about 5 secs, whereas the Win2k analysis runs for more than 5 mins and it continues to run and run.

My Win2K partition runs Norton Ghost 2003, though obviously no images are stored in that particular partition (only the referred virtual partition, VIRTPART.DAT). Is it therefore wise to do a disk cleanup on a partition that runs Ghost?

Disable the Compress old files:

How To Speed Disk Cleanup.

Hmm.. that seems to be for XP only.

Try this instead:
The Disk Cleanup tool in Windows 2000 stops responding while it scans old files for compression.

But I've not opted to compress files!

I'm just wanting to know why that assessment seems to be unending, in Win2K. Until it ends, I can't select any of the options it then presents and therefore the cleanup cannot proceed.

Is it simply that I'm not waiting long enough for 6.6GB of files to be assessed, or is there, in fact, an issue with this in Win2K?

I had a look at that KB article but I'm not sure that that applies here, as I've not opted to compress the drive. Or am I confusing compression of the drive with compression of individual files? The assessing process is not stopping, it's going on for ever!

Let me get this straight, you're on one partition using XP, and then you're trying to use disk cleanup, from within XP, on a drive/partition that has 2000 as the OS?

Try going into that partition/OS, running disk cleanup from within the OS, instead of doing it from within XP.

It's not like your just cleaning out a bunch of files, you have an OS in there, XP will take a very long time to go through, it'll be much faster from within W2K.

Yes, I'm running two partitions on the same hard drive but, for doing Disk Cleanup, I'm booting into each respective OS. So, I'm already doing what you're suggesting. Under Win2K, the initial assessment of files just runs and runs.

The cleanup searches for old, uncompressed files.
It does not care if the drive is compressed or uncompressed, the search only takes longer on uncompressed drive.

You can create custom cleanup task list.
Start->Run:
cleanmgr /sageset:<number>, for instance, cleanmgr /sageset:1000.

then select all cleanup operations you want, do not select the compress old files option.

Now, to run this custom cleaning, you'll need to execute following command:
cleanmgr /sagerun:<number>, use your <number>.

This should work both in XP and 2000.

Yesterday, I finally found the answer. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886219.

This is a bug affecting Win2K, including two Server editions. A Registry amendment is required. This is simple to do and completely cures the problem. I now have a cleaned-up partition.

Doubt it. Run CCleaner. Then you'll be on your way to a clean partition.

Of course formatting it would make it really clean....

You're wrong, Dosfreak. It's official. If you read the KB article, you'll see that Microsoft have declared this a genuine problem in Windows 2000. I applied the remedy described in Microsoft's KB article - modifying a Registry key - and it worked. QED.

Wrong about what? I wasn't disputing the KB, just the assertion that the Disk Cleanup program actually cleaned your system decently.