AsI said Disk Cleanup are individual programs. There is a general purpose cleaner that behaviour can be specified by registry entries, and it's the basis of all the ordinary file and folder cleaners.
You can create your own cleaners by creating registry entries.
Here's a post I made 8 years ago. Need to read whole page.
You can extend the inbuilt cleaner.
Here's one I just made that does *.fred in c:\desktop if more than 2 days since last accessed.
Merge the file then look here in the registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\CustomDeleter
and alter the path and filetype (I didn't want to delete my hard drive by mistake as 98 disk cleanup threatened to do if you customised parameters). Also as the path is an Expand type it's in hex in the regfile and in english in the reg (because regfiles don't
support expand so it uses hex). If using environmental variables the data type must be expand.
I created a file called New Text Document.Fred, set my clock forward, and it deleted. It didn't delete unless I set the clock forward so it shows the time is working (note it is last access not modified or created).
To use
cleanmgr /sageset:<a number>
and only tick the Customer Deleter
This sets it up
Then to run or schedule
cleanmgr /sagerun:<same number used above>
You can have as many pairs of sageset/run as you want.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\CustomDeleter]
@="{C0E13E61-0CC6-11d1-BBB6-0060978B2AE6}"
"FileList"="*.fred"
"Folder"=hex(2):63,00,3a,00,5c,00,64,00,65,00,73,00,6b,00,74,00,6f,00,70,00,00,\
00
"Flags"=dword:00000000
"LastAccess"=dword:00000002
"StateFlags"=dword:00000001
"Display"="Custom"
"Description"="Clears a custom folder"
To make multiple cleaners just change the last key name (CustomDeleter)
Seperate multiple filetypes like so (pipe)
*.fred|*.horse
Seperate multiple directories the same way.
c:\desktop|C:\games
Use this syntax for directories ?:ecycled
Which will do all drives or the specified drive (depending on how cleanup is being used)
Last Access can be set to 0 for instant deleting.
AFAIK Disk Cleanup won't delete user data only IE's cache. There is more there than IE's cache.
Here are the flags if you are interested.
Flags
REG_DWORD or REG_BINARYFlags controlling elements of the search and cleaning procedure. One or more of the following values. Flag Value Meaning
DDEVCF_DOSUBDIRS0x00000001Search and remove recursively.
DDEVCF_REMOVEAFTERCLEAN0x00000002After the handler is run once, remove it from the registry.
DDEVCF_REMOVEREADONLY0x00000004Remove files that meet the search criteria even if they are read-only.
DDEVCF_REMOVESYSTEM0x00000008Remove files that meet the search criteria even if they are system files.
DDEVCF_REMOVEHIDDEN0x00000010Remove files that meet the search criteria even if they are hidden files.
DDEVCF_DONTSHOWIFZERO0x00000020Do not display this handler in the disk cleanup manager if no files match its search criteria.
DDEVCF_REMOVEDIRS0x00000040Match the FileList value against directories and remove matches and all of their subdirectories.
DDEVCF_RUNIFOUTOFDISKSPACE0x00000080Run this handler only if available disk space has fallen below the critical value, determined by the disk cleanup manager setting the EVCF_OUTOFDISKSPACE flag through IEmptyVolumeCache::Initialize or IEmptyVolumeCache2::InitializeEx.
DDEVCF_REMOVEPARENTDIR0x00000100Remove the parent directory of the specified files once the cleaner has run.
DDEVCF_PRIVATE_LASTACCESS0x10000000Use the LastAccess value, if provided, in ascertaining which files should be cleaned. This flag is ignored when using the DataDrivenCleaner—any provided LastAccess value is always used.
