# RESOLVED Blue Folder Names



## Ascendancy (Jul 19, 2006)

My C: Drive text is colored blue instead of black, and some folders inside of my C: drive are also blue instead of black. Anybody have any idea why this is?


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## justpassingby (Mar 11, 2007)

*Re: Blue Folder Names*

Hi Ascendancy !

Blue font files are encrypted (not very likely) or compressed files. It's a feature of the NTFS file system used by XP.

Right-click the c: drive and go to properties. Is the "compress the drive to save disk space" box checked ?

Blue files can also appear if you run disk cleanup and choose to "compress old files".

There's no problem having your files compressed, you can still access them but it'll take a little more time since Windows will have to decompress them when you'll need those files (you won't see much difference on accessing one single file though). But if there's a program you haven't used for 50 days (default value used by disk cleanup to say a file is "old") you may find it takes a bit longer to load when you'll eventually re-use it after running disk cleanup with the aforementioned option 'cause all its files will have been compressed.

It's yours to decide whether you want more free space or applications that load quicker. IMHO, the gain of space is not big enough compared to the loss of performances and I never check the "compress old files" box when I run disk cleanup.

If you want, you can decompress all those compressed files and folders using the compact command. See this link :
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=648
But make sure you have enough free room on your drive before you do that (you'll need at least as much free space that the space currently used on the drive if the whole drive is compressed).


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## Ascendancy (Jul 19, 2006)

*Re: Blue Folder Names*

Yup, that box was checked, and un-checking it fixed the problem. And I had noticed that a lot of things took a while to open, so I am glad that you told me about why they were blue. Thanks for your help.


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## Salis Dogar (Feb 26, 2009)

Thansk to all u guys as i was also suffering same problem... solution has helped me in very easy manner... Thanks

i'll be looking forward for new findings too...


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## Salis Dogar (Feb 26, 2009)

Thanks to all u guys as i was also suffering same problem... solution has helped me in very easy manner... Thanks

i'll be looking forward for new findings too... :wave:


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