Foolestroupe -

At least in Win2K and later, Windows insists on checking "Compress old files" every time you run a "Disk Cleanup." Disk Cleanup is what you use to clear extra Temp files, Autocomplete Forms, Internet pages, Cookies, etc. (You can choose what to delete.)

In your setup, you can tell it NEVER COMPRESS ANYTHING, but it still continues to check to see if there's anything (files not accessed recently) for it to compress - even if it can't compress them because of your settings.

This compression only works if your drive is formatted NTFS, but Windows insists on doing the check even if you don't have a drive where it can put anything it compresses - i.e. if you're using a FAT32 or FAT drive format.

In "modern Windows" the compression (on NTFS drives) can be allowed for entire drives, individual folders, and/or individual files, and apparently is some variant of LZ compression. Nearly all of the sparse Microsoft information on this system says that compression/decompression is "processor intensive" and may significantly slow down your machine - in effect saying "don't use it unless you have to." A "side feature" is that you can't see thumbnails of image files that are compressed when you look for something in Win Explorer.

Yet the search for files to compress is built in as if it's a good thing?

There is a regedit you can do to turn it off, but Mickey says it shouldn't be used "unless it's a confirmed problem on your computer."

Evidence that Mickey doesn't know what this "feature" does is ubiquitous in all articles, where they say that the "Compress old files" is searching for "Comressed files." It's NOT. It's searching for uncompressed files eligible to be compressed due to lack of use.

WinXP and later (maybe Win2K?) allow separate "ZIP" compression of files, built into the Windows setup; but that's a separate sort of "mostly works" feature, and there's no "on the fly" extraction. You have to drag-and-drop files in and out of your "ZIP Folder" for that routine.

John