Wrong disc clean up?

I ran disc clean up utility of XP today and after that it showed me some files that could be removed. There was one option Compress Old Files( marked here with red arrow), I checked this box also along with temp internet files and clicked OK. Now I think I might have made a mistake as I suspect this action has removed my old compressed files. Is it so? If so what I should do now.

 

No it didn't remove any files. What this does is it compresses files that have not been accessed for a while. So everything is stil there. But when access to them is required it will be a bit slower because they are compressed.

Files that become compressed can be identified by the blue text color of the file/folder name. Check your windows directory I bet you'll see a lot of them there. Those are the installation files for windows that are rarelly accessed, and some of them are by default left in a compressed status.

So you did nothing wrong

 

Here's what I am talking about.

Oh ya and they are usually hidden (the system files at least)

 

Thanks qwester, I was a bit worried! So nice of you.