disc clean doesn't work

[Flip81]

for some reason the computer I'm working on's disc clean doesn't work.  anyone know how to troubleshoot this?

[Deerpark]

Not without more info.
What version of windows?
What is "disc clean" and how doesn't it work? Do you receive any error messages?

[Broni]

You mean Disk Cleanup?
What happens?

[patio]

I would try booting into safemode and running chkdsk /r from the command prompt.
Then re-boot into normal mode and it should run.
When is the last time you defragged ? ?

[Flip81]

patio:  tried to cleanup, then did a defrag, then tried again.  No biggie though.  I can't remember the specs, not my computer.  It was running well enough.  When I first got it, it wouldn't even boot and I went through *censored* and back troubleshooting this thing.   Works now.  It was an Emachines POS.  Next time I'll try chkdsk /r from the command prompt in safemode if the disc cleanup doesn't work.  thanks.

[Fed]

Disk Cleanup takes forever to get going, what happens when you click on it?
I'm not even going to try it because it takes so long.
Ccleaner is a good alternative.

[patio]

I'll have to agree with Fed here...
The most common reasons this happens is because that person just hasn't performed regular maintenence and it just spirals out of control...
Another common cause is a drive that is too full of data...15% free space is a good rule of thumb for Windows boxes.
For example on a machine i saw this week in the "compress old files" portion it ran for 2 hours alone.
It's not the method i would use but it was what they wanted.

One other thing you may consider would be DLoading and running the diagnostics from the HDD manuf. site to see just how healthy that drive is.

Good Luck...let us know.