The answer is to have a custom downloads folder and not use the default one.
I'm upgrading Skip/Fast again - it is certainly possible I ticked Downloads by accident but the point is it should not be in the list to begin with. Why should I setup a new folder like My Downloads? I guess maybe MS is hoping you will delete 3rd party programs by accident and replace them with inferior "universal" apps. Trick or treat.
The answer is it's a user folder and should remain untouched.
If people can't be bothered with file management then it's their problem if they are out of space or create huge backup images simply because they are copying ages old Flash installers, Chrome installers, Java installers, iTunes installers, six copies of every download; numbered (1) through (5); Adobe Reader installers, numerous stub installers, webpages named download.htm with a corresponding folder, programs that haven't been around since Windows 98, etc.
What is bizarre is this change was made after it was announced disk cleanup is deprecated.
All they had to do was put the downloads check box visually in a separate isolated box on the popup and always make sure it is unchecked ie does not default to previous state.
Putting it in middle of all other checkboxes is what makes it more prone to risk.
Also, like the warning about deleting system installation files, they could warn users if box is checked.
Yeah but in settings, there is a separate setting to set deleting downloads to NEVER which is clear, and you would have to work hard to accidentally delete the files.
My main beef with the new Storage Sense menus is that you do not get a progress bar, and it can seem if the cleanup has crashed.
Disk Cleanup was also similar. Seems to progress in stages but then the progress bar seems to stall indefinitely. Plus, it has an ungracious exit of just terminating without confirmation that the process is complete.
It also seems to stop responding but I check for activity in the process Disk Cleanup Manager for Windows (often 0%) after DISM has finished and the Windows Modules Installer Worker. Once they go down to background after quitting a hung process you can either launch it again or restart.
Yeah, there's something seriously flawed in the Windows Scheduler and the event system. Events come and go as they please, very often with no connection to the time when the actual event occurred. The thread scheduler is horrible when running multicore CPUs like the Threadripper. Linux does not have any of these issues and performance can often be 4x and more there.
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