Start

The utility begins by showing this progress window. The text says:

Disk Cleanup is calculating how much space you will be able to free on (C:). This may take a few minutes to complete.

It felt a bit strange to have a progress window before any main window was available.

Results

Surprisingly, it found 2GB of temporary internet files and over 500MB of files from the Recycle Bin. I’m guessing this is from all 3 profiles on this PC, not just my one.

You tick the items you want it to clean up. It ticks the obvious ones by default, which is nice. You can read the Description field to find out what the selected item is for. You can View Files to see exactly what it contains.

Shown in Taskbar

This utility has a taskbar entry the whole time. Even for the startup progress box. This is unusual for a property sheet type of window.

I guess they made an exception because the tasks it performs sometimes last a long time. You might want to switch tasks whilst it runs. Also, some parts of it have a wizard interface and XP does usually show these in the taskbar. So this is a helpful semi-deviation from XP convention.

More of the Same

There is a More tab which I decided to explore. It lists 3 more areas you can clean:

• Windows components
• Installed programs
• System Restore

Each one has a Clean up button. These use sentence case, curiously. Being a curious chap (in more ways than one) I decided to see where they led.

Windows Components Wizard

This window is spread over several pages with Next and Back buttons. It follows the conventions for wizards elsewhere in XP. Maybe the entire cleanup experience should be a single wizard which you progress through a page at a time?

The first page lists components with the amount of disk space they are taking up. It waffles about what it is for:

To add or remove a component, click the checkbox. A shaded box means that only part of the component will be installed. To see what’s included in a component, click Details.

So does ticking an item add it or remove it? Below the list is a Description label. For the first item, Accessories and Utilities, it says:

Includes Windows Accessories and Utilities for your computer.

Ah, so you tick the items you want to include. This is different from the window you just came from, where you ticked items you wanted to remove. Good to know. There is a Details button which I couldn’t resist.

Acceessories and Utilities

Very similar to the wizard window, except it is a single page with an OK button and a Cancel button. It list has two items:

• Accessories
• Games

As there are only two items, these could go straight in the Windows Components Wizard list instead of the? That would remove this separate window, simplifying the interface. This window has another Details button, so I checked it out.

Accessories

A copy of the previous window, except:

• it lists 8 items;
• the Details button is disabled;
• and the Description label doesn’t say “includes”, so you have to assume it works the same as the previous window even though it wasn’t true for the window before that.

These 8 items could have been listed instead of the Windows Accessories and Utilities item? Scrolling a slightly longer list is much less work opening 2 separate windows and reviewing each of them.

I clicked OK and returned to the previous window. I selected the Games item and clicked Details.

Games

Got to respect the consistency; this is the 3^rd identical window layout. This time it lists 6 items.

Again, I’m wondering why these weren’t listed in the Wizard list. I think one longer list would be better than a screenful of windows where each contains part of the list.

I clicked OK to the Games and Windows Accessories and Utilities windows. Then I clicked Next on the Windows Components Wizard window.

Configuring Components

It started making the changes I selected, displaying progress as it went.

Completed

Once the progress had finished, it changed to the final page. It starts with big bold text, saying:

Completing the Windows Components Wizard

“Completing” means it hasn’t finished yet. However, the label below that says:

You have successfully completed the Windows Components Wizard.

Yay! Below that, it says:

To close this wizard, click Finish.

The window’s red Close button is disabled. That may as well be enabled now it has finished?

I clicked the Finish button.

“Are You Sure?”

So I clicked OK to start the cleanup. Instead, I got a message box which asks:

Are you sure you want to perform these actions?

Does this mean I’ve told it to do something which will have disastrous consequences and this is my last chance to back out? Is it just being annoying?

I guessed it was being annoying and clicked Yes.

Progress

My guess paid off. The wizard dissappeared and a progress window appeared, much like the startup one. It reported what was happening.