- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000
- Date added: October 15, 2007
- Total Downloads: 27,520
- Downloads last week: 285
- See full specifications
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 42 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
Empty directory folders are annoying, but not often a cause for great concern. Still, they build up over time, and Remove Empty Directories is a smart and fast solution. The tiny program greets you with a mostly blank pane and an icon key to understanding your results. There's a dialog box at the top to specify a particular folder or drive to search, although by default it checks your C drive.
At the bottom is a Scan button. System resources and drive capacity aside, it takes a while to scan an entire drive. When finished, it coughs up a folder tree marked by the key: red folders will be removed, gray ones won't be touched, and blue ones have been protected, a feature accessible from the context menu. Once you have your list ready to go, hit the Delete button at the bottom and watch the extinction scroll past. Folders that couldn't be deleted might contain hidden files or be connected to a program that relies on them. The Settings tab provides both basic and advanced options, including Windows Explorer integration, a blacklist, customizable protocol, and setting the max depth for folder parsing.
This app is clearly aimed at those who like knowing exactly what's in their folder tree, or those who hate programs that leave behind empty folders as territorial markings of their presence. It functions well, and makes a useful if esoteric system utility.
Publisher's description
From JonasJohn.de :RED searches and deletes empty directories recursively below a given start folder and shows the result in a well arranged tree. Further you can create some custom rules for keeping and deleting folders. Empty files in directories can also be ignored. Just try RED to see the other features - no registry keys or system files will be touched.
What's new in this version:
This is the first version released on CNET Download.com.
More popular File Management downloads
- 39,646 downloads 1. Easeus Partition Master Home Edition
- 8,691 downloads 2. Unlocker
- 8,503 downloads 3. VirtualLab Data Recovery
- 7,551 downloads 4. CompuApps SwissKnife V3
- 7,354 downloads 5. HJ-Split
- See all File Management downloads
User reviews
- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 42 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
-
Showing 5 of 39 user reviewsSee all 39 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
2 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Version: Remove Empty Directories
Pros: free and quick; easy to understand and to look at (the trees!).
Cons: used it...kept stopping at an MSCreate.dir file; wouldn't delete it...pressed okay to continue and ignore...nothing happens, just stuck. tried manually deleting the others after it, based upon the tree that is visible...no good, it starts from before the stuck file then stops at it again...won't go on after that one. won't recommend this, though it got a glowing review from download!
-
Version: Remove Empty Directories
"RED is Very Effective but Use Caution!"
Pros: RED is reasonably fast and extremely straight-forward. It clearly shows, in the sidebar, what it will or won't touch. It really removes a whole whack of empty directories, at your say-so. It won't touch some, even though it tries to, but I assume that those particular directories are somehow linked to other things that make removal difficult, if not impossible. For example, the file PASSWORD.LOG is preventing removal of some otherwise empty directories on my XP. Given enough time, I might yet figure out how to alter that.
Cons: When it can't remove a directory that it has marked for removal, RED tends to crash from time to time. There are usually ways around that. Like right-clicking on the directory listed and going directly to the source for manual deletion, or going to the file that has prevented the directory's deletion (in my case, finding PASSWORD.LOG and deleting it or altering its' contents). Sometimes, I'll open Windows Explorer (or Xplorer2 Lite, which is much more functional...get it from C/Net) side-by-side with RED in order to find and delete stubborn directories.
Although RED is extremely effective at marking empty directories for deletion, it does not differentiate between useless, completely unnecessary directories and those that are both useful and necessary, albeit occasionally found empty until called into service.
Therefore, as is generally the best advice, BACK-UP YOUR SYSTEM before deleting or tinkering with anything that you are not absolutely certain of!!! OR use RED's "Ignore Directory" features!!!
In my opinion, RED needs just a tad bit of fine-tuning, but its' creators are definitely on to something good and useful with this program!
-
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: Remove Empty Directories
"OK, but suddenly stopped working"
Pros: Fast scanning, showed list of folders that were empty.
Cons: Program stalled in the middle of deleting empty folders. Happened every time, even after computer was restarted.
-
2 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Version: Remove Empty Directories
""It WOULD be GREAT, IF it ONLY WORKED!!""
Pros: "Empty files DO take up space on the hard-drive and REALLY serve very little purpose when you are NOT using them. And, any WELL WRITTEN user program, SHOULD BE able to RECREATE a file, IF called upon to do so, with the CODE of the program itself.
Cons: "As MENTIONED, by previous "GINNIE PIGS", this user program DOES "HANG-UP" while TRYING to DELETE "EMPTY FILES" and does NOT allow the user to "SLIDE BY" as stated in the original documentation. And, I find it APPAULING that CNET would have put this user program on their download list, "WITHOUT TESTING" it out themselves!! Come on guys, this was a "NO BRAINER"!!! And, while I am "BEATING MY DRUM", the new user program, "VERSION TRACKER" does NOT work as well, so DO NOT waste your 'TIME' nor 'MONEY' in buying it and it is OBVIOUS that CNET must have some financial interest in it, as "THEY" have NOT WRITTEN a REVIEW for it!! The FIRST RULE of MARKETING, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER go to market with ANY product that does NOT perform as ADVERTISED, because "ON AVERAGE" every displeased CUSTOMER will tell, AT LEAST, 25 other people about their DISSATISFACTION"!!! Game, Set and Match!! Turn out the lights, the party is OVER!! Yes, the "FAT LADY" has ALREADY SUNG!!! "Mr. Jim"
-
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Remove Empty Directories
Cons: Suggests deletion of necessary system folders; exclusions interface is difficult to use. This isn't worth the 5 seconds it takes to download it.
- See all 39 user reviews Write review
