It was not so long ago when we saw a major problem with the Windows Vista Disk Cleanup tool, after a registry cleaner broke a vital handler information in the registry. Here is another such case, but on this occasion the system is running Windows XP.
One of our reader asks: I have used a registry cleaner in my PC and I have exactly the same problem as mentioned in the blog post Serious Disk Cleanup problem caused by broken registration. The Disk Cleanup program cleaned up everything including my Windows XP installation. Is there a fix for Windows XP?
(Information in this post applies to Windows XP systems only.)
After comparing the VolumeCaches branch which was sent to me by the asker, I narrowed down the issue to the following key:
In the above key, the value named Folder was missing. The Folder value should be present, and must have the following Value data
As a result of the missing value, when you select the entry Catalog files for the Content Indexer in Disk Cleanup, files in the current partition is erased.
Registry Fix
Here is a registry fix which reinstates the missing entry. Download contentindexcleaner.reg and save to Desktop. Right-click on the file and choose Merge. Click Yes when asked for confirmation.
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I had the same problem with my PC but now is perfoming like is new
Very useful!
@John: You won’t get your data back by running Chkdsk. You may try slaving the disk to another PC and run a data rec. software from there.
Once this registry key is reinstated, can I then do a chkdsk on my external drive that fell victim to data loss, to recover the ‘deleted’ files??
This is an update to my previous e-mail concerning Registry Defense. I verified that running this program will corrupt the Content Index Cleaner hive [remove Folder] and lead to a computer crash using Disk Cleanup. I hope this helps others avoid this condition.