Disk cleanup compressing files = slow performance?

[[LYL]Homer]

I've got a user in our office that has had problems with WinXP lagging on her machine, not always, but at seemingly random times. I think I've found the culprit - select files are blue, aka compressed. I'm thinking Windows is bogging when it hits one of these files.

She says she has run Disk Cleanup when it prompted her to. I've done a little digging and it seems that it will also compress older files. The MS KB has plenty about how to compress, but not uncompress.

Browsing in Explorer on this system there are compressed (blue) files here and there. It would take hours and hours to weed out the individual files and uncompress them. What I'm wondering is that since I cannot just click on the C: drive, or folders therein, and choose to 'uncompress' everything since the checkbox to "Compress contents to save disk space" is clear - can I just check it, apply, then uncheck the entire drive to uncompress everything without messing anything up?

Athlon64 3200+
Biostar 6100-M9
2x512mb ram
WinXP Pro w/ SP2

 

[F1xxer]

Go to the properties of the file and/or folder and just uncheck the option to compress them.

 

[Langford]

If it's prompting her to run disk cleanup, her hard drive may be close to full.

I have had no problems with being slowed by disk compression, but if you want to control it, the command prompt is your friend. You can use the compact command to uncompress files by using the "U" switch. for example:
compact /U /S /I *.*
That command will un-compress all files within the current directory, as well as subdirectories. If you run it from the root of the drive, it should get the whole drive, or you can specify c: directly.

Personnaly, I like compression. I generally schedual a batch file to run that performs a little optomizing for me. The batch file contains the following:
c:
cd\
compact /c /s /i /q *.bmp *.dib *.pcx *.log *.txt *.doc *.htm *.mid *.xml *.rtf *.ppt *.ini *.html *.ttf *.fon *.lnk *.url *.ico *.icl *.pcx *.tiff *.raw *.tmp *.hlp *.pif *.pnf *.msi *.mst *.sav *.bat *.cmd *.iso *.mdb *.inf *.oo? *.od?
compact /u /s /i /q *.jpg *.jpe *.jfif *.gif *.zip *.tar *.rar *.cab *.ice *.arj *.png *.avi *.mp3 *.dll *.exe *.sys *.pdf *.pfm *.drv *.wav *.ac3 *.aac *.mp3
defrag.exe c: -f -v
defrag.exe c: -f -v -b

 

[nessus]

If you are in a low space situation when the files are compressed, they will frag really badly. If the drive still has enough disk space left, run a defrag. File compression on modern hardware should have a ~2% impact on performance. Most people won't notice performance differences less than 10-15%.