Dear olann-ga;
Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to answer your interesting
question.
The general rule of thumb is that anything that ends up in a “temp”
file is temporary and not instrumental to the function of your
computer. Temp folders are intentionally constructed for this purpose
so as to give the user the option of purging space-eating data if/when
it is become useful or necessary no longer. The exception to this rule
is the temporary Internet files, where some cookies, histories, login
names, etc. might live. You can delete these too but if you do, you
may find that you have to go through the login process each time you
return to a secure page. While this may be annoying, it actually
doesn’t hurt anything to delete the temporary Internet files as well.
(I do).
Here’s a great description in simple terms about deleting temp files:
“First, close ALL open programs.
Click on your start button, then go to find, then files or
folders......in this "Find All Files" dialog box, make sure where it
says "look in", that it is looking at your C: drive (or, if you have
multiple hard drives or partitions, be sure "All Local Drives" is
selected) and be sure there is a check in the box next to where it
says "include subfolders".....Now, click your mouse pointer in the box
that says "named" and type the following, EXACTLY as it is here.
*.tmp,*.chk,~*.*
That's asterisk period t m p comma asterisk period c h k comma tilde
asterisk period asterisk .....with no spaces.
(The "tilde" is the little squiggle above the Tab key on the left end
of your keyboard.....DO NOT FORGET THE TILDE as ~*.* will find all
files which begin with ~, but *.* without the tilde would find all
files on the drive.....and you DON'T want to do that!!)
Once it finds all the files, it will list them in the box below and at
the bottom it will tell you how many it found
Hit ctrl+a to select them all, then hit your delete key....If it won't
delete some of them, that's because they are attached to some program
running in the background, so you may have to delete them one at a
time.
All of these files are safe to delete and removing them can solve some
crazy problems you may be having.
Once they are all deleted, you can save this process as an Icon on
your desktop so you can repeat it with one click.
Still inside the "Find All Files" box, go to the File menu and click
on "Save Search"......this will put an icon on your desktop that you
can click on any time you want to delete temps again! “
DELETING TEMP FILES 101
http://personal-computer-tutor.com/deletingtempfiles.htm
This is a common exercise. Don’t be afraid to do it. As a matter of
fact, do it often and keep your computer free of dead resident files
that are just consuming space unnecessarily. If you are afraid to do
it yourself or find the exercise too time consuming, you can get a
program called Window Washer (I use it daily) to perform these tasks
(and many others like deleting cookies, search bars, drop-downs,
history, clipboard data, and so on) for you automatically. You can
clean folders manually or set the program to clean on shutdown. Either
way, it’s worth downloading the trial version, if for no other reason
just to clean your computer real well one time. If its been quite some
time since you’ve thoroughly cleaned tamp files from your computer,
this baby can literally recover MEGS of space for you. Your computer
will love you for it. Window Washer’s latest version costs about $30
but there are some earlier versions on the Internet that can be
downloaded and used for free.
Alternatively, you can adjust your AUTOEXEC.BAT to perform the
function on startup by following these instructions. This way you will
only be deleting files that Windows deems extraneous and unnecessary:
COMPUTERTIPS.COM
http://www.computertips.com/Windows/Windows98/Startup/19970905001.htm
I hope you find that that my research exceeds your expectations. If
you have any questions about my research please post a clarification
request prior to rating the answer. I welcome your rating and your
final comments and I look forward to working with you again in the
near future. Thank you for bringing your question to us.
Best regards;
Tutuzdad-ga
INFORMATION SOURCES
WINDOW WASHER
http://www.proxy4free.com/washer.html
COMPUTERTIPS.COM
http://www.computertips.com/Windows/Windows98/Startup/19970905001.htm
DELETING TEMP FILES 101
http://personal-computer-tutor.com/deletingtempfiles.htm
SEARCH STRATEGY
SEARCH ENGINE USED:
Google ://www.google.com
SEARCH TERMS USED:
DELETING TEMP FILES
TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES
WINDOW WASHER
AUTOEXEC.BAT OPTIONS |
Request for Answer Clarification by
olann-ga
on
17 Apr 2003 13:06 PDT
Thank you for your speedy reply. Frankly, however, I'm not entirely
satisfied with the answer as I don't think you addressed my specifics.
The answer you did give me was useful, but it only addresses three
very obvious file types, "tmp", "chk" and "~*". In my c:\windows\temp
folder, however, I have, as previously indicated, very many
subfolders, all which have subfolders, all which have files. The
extensions of these files, among others, are:
.icm
.emf
.ini
.001, .002, .003, etc.
.exe (!!)
.IDX
.htm
.wmf
.exd
.tag
.pfm
.dat
.hdr
.ins
.tag
.cab
.dll
.bin
.dict
.pfd
I could go on. THESE are the files I want to know if I can delete.
There are over 60MB of them! How would, for instance, an "exe" file
get into that TEMP folder? (Rhetorical question, don't answer). Can
you, under the same $20, provide an answer that would tell me if I can
delete ALL files and folders that appear in c:\windows\temp, without
dangering my system? Thank you kindly for your further consideration.
|
Clarification of Answer by
tutuzdad-ga
on
17 Apr 2003 16:45 PDT
I understand your concern but much of what you can delete will depend
largely on how much YOU know about your system and what’s installed on
it. Of course, I know nothing about your system and can’t tell you
whether it is safe to delete a driver (.dll), an executable (.exe)
program or any other file, other than those that are commonly known as
having extensions indicating that they are – for lack of a better term
– garbage.
I cannot begin to guess what you have on your computer and what the
many extensions might be referring to, but I can hit on the common
ones that are least likely to cause a computer earthquake if they are
deleted. CLICKOPEDIA offers this general guide to deleting temp files
that you might find helpful if this is something you’ve never done
before:
http://www.clickopedia.com/safelydelete.htm
You can delete files with extension…
*.* (This is a wild card and basically means “any file”)
FOUND IN C:\Windows\temp
You can remove any file in this folder that is more than one day old.
That is to say that if it is in C:\Windows\temp or in any subfolder of
C:\Windows\temp and it is more than one day old you can delete it.
*.---
FOUND IN C:\ Backup Files
Created By Windows
*.1st
FOUND IN C:\
Delete these files only if you have backed up your registry
~$*.doc
FOUND Throughout your drive
Temporary Word files created whenever a document is open. Safe to
delete only if the original document is closed (these 'orphans' are
often left behind during a crash)
*.bak
FOUND Throughout your drive
Backup files from various applications
*.cab
FOUND Throughout your drive
Installation Files
*.chk
FOUND IN C:\
Files created by Scandisk and its ancestor, ChkDsk
*.dos
FOUND IN C:\
Safe to delete only if you don't dual-boot to DOS.
*.fts
FOUND Throughout your drive
Windows will recreate these files as needed
*.gid
FOUND Throughout your drive
Windows will recreate these files as needed
*.log
FOUND IN C:\ or C:\Windows
Log files created by certain programs tracking certain jobs; if
they're more than a few days old, they're not being used anymore.
*.old
FOUND IN C:\
Old versions of files that have been replaced by newer versions
*.prv
FOUND IN C:\
Log files created by past Windows boots
*.shs
FOUND IN Desktop or throughout your drive
Scrap objects; temporary files created in OLE-supporting applications.
*.tmp
FOUND Throughout your drive
Temporary Files from various applications.
*.wbk
FOUND IN C:\My Documents and its subfolders
Word Backup Files
The guide at TECHFILE offers more in depth instructions:
http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/stepone/jump/0,24331,10827,00.html
In addition, here is a newsgroup discussion that one of my wise
colleagues offers where the issue is discussed;
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&th=645325bdd8751e7d&rnum=11
To avoid all this though, as I mentioned, you can use Window Washer
and resolve the issue by letting the software delete what can be
safely deleted. The entire contents of my temp folders (and many other
folders that I selected) are completely emptied each time I shut down
my computer (using this program) and nothing bizarre has ever happened
to me yet.
Regards;
Tutuzdad-ga
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