An "overweight" Temp Folder


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Here's a little clean-up tip for you all. About a week ago, my step-father was getting "low harddrive space" warnings on his laptop. We were puzzled by this, because it is farily new, with a 25 gig HDD. We looked at all his saved Documents and PowerPoint presentations, and it just didn't add up. Puzzled, I went "exploring". To my surprise, I found a folder I had never heard of before.

C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Local Settings\Temp\

This is a hidden temp folder that doesn't get dumped when you go through disk cleanup. I was shocked to find that it's contents summed up to a whopping 17.1 GB! This folder contained nothing more than .temps and .baks. I decided that these were a collection of those little backup files that appear on your desktop while you are working with some sort of MS Office application. I always thought that those were deleted afterwards, but no, this folder was full of them. Well, I cleaned out the folder, and Problem solved! 17.1 GB of free space wes returned to the hard drive!

Matt

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**Warning: it has been shown that following the procedures in this post could cause different applications or system functioality to not work properly. See posts below.**

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Yes do as i have done for many years ( well about 7 months) keep a shortcut to that hidden folder on your desktop.

AFter every so often I just double click and delete the content. I also keep a shortcut to the Temp. Internet files folder ( also hidden.)

I was also amazed the first time i went and cleaned this out when it had about 4 gigs of crap in there. For instance if you download an attachment via your email and just "open" it you are really saving it to that TEMP folder, and so on with any othert type of file ( music, etc.)

~Jose

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  • 1 month later...

Go to Start > Run

Type %temp%

That will open the folder

Ctrl+ a selects all files

Hit the delete key

Hit Enter at the prompt

If and when you get a prompt that it cannot delete a file in use, it will be the first file listed in the folder

Hold down Ctrl and click on the file to un-highlight it

Hit delete key

Hit enter at the prompt

Lather, rinse repeat

The time it took to type all of the above out, this process could've been performed on 10 computers ;)

Don't forget to empty your Temporary Internet Files also.

This can use up alot of space, and all of the porn you have been surfing shows up in there

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  • 2 months later...
Here's a little clean-up tip for you all. About a week ago, my step-father was getting "low harddrive space" warnings on his laptop. We were puzzled by this, because it is farily new, with a 25 gig HDD. We looked at all his saved Documents and PowerPoint presentations, and it just didn't add up. Puzzled, I went "exploring". To my surprise, I found a folder I had never heard of before.

C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Local Settings\Temp\

This is a hidden temp folder that doesn't get dumped when you go through disk cleanup. I was shocked to find that it's contents summed up to a whopping 17.1 GB! This folder contained nothing more than .temps and .baks. I decided that these were a collection of those little backup files that appear on your desktop while you are working with some sort of MS Office application. I always thought that those were deleted afterwards, but no, this folder was full of them. Well, I cleaned out the folder, and Problem solved! 17.1 GB of free space wes returned to the hard drive! :)

Matt

I've know about this for a while. There is also a temp folder in C:\Windows(\Temp) that you can delete the contents of. Do not delete the folder though :P

Most cleaning programs, like System Mechanic automatically clean all these kinds of folders.

Also, if you manually try to delete them but get the 'file in use' error, try deleting them in Safe mode, always works :)

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Be careful cleaning out your Temp folder. Some anti-virus programs will place a couple of files in there to aid in there scans. Don't delete them.

Hey TT75. I've never heard that before. Can you give me an example?

I would think that if an AV were to put any file in a temp folder, it can't be too important. The companies know that people empty them regularly, either manually or with a tool. I would assume that any file an AV places in a Temp folder is not of great importance, and the AV can replace it if deleted.

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Panda places of couple of files in my Temp folder. One time I deleted them and Panda quit working. I now create a different folder and move the files found in the folder to see if anything is affected. After a week if there are no problems I delete them. This may apply only to Security Suite type anti-virus prgrams. This occurred on my 98SE setup. I haven't tired it with XP. I'll let you know.

No errors this time. It just recreated the folder.

Edited by TheTerrorist_75
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i did this process on my winxp machine, it removed a file for my sound drivers to work. dunno which one it was, I just did a hard reset and booted from last known config.

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I don't know, I think it is tied to one of the folders for VIA realtek, all I know is when I cleaned that folder out, and only that folder, I lost all sound on my computer. That tells me there is more in that temp folder then we may think.

I'm investigating it now.

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hi mat

when i read this thread yesterday

i went through the procedures

but in those temp files was my pdf reader

foxit.

and when i deleted the files, i deleted foxit.

so i had to go back and reinstall .

foxit .

at first the appli was recognising a previous

foxit insatll

so i had to go and delete every thing associated with foxit and

start again

from the- search- registry

and luckly i had regcleaner

which was still showing foxit

so once i cleaned the sys up i was able to reinstall

foxit

im not sure why it was in the

temp folders

so any one who is down loading,

make sure what folder it is in.

apart from that.

every thing is fine.

marty

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i'm sure it depends on what exactly has been installed on the computer. just be careful of doing it, especially on someone elses computer, I didn't know about my sound issue until I rebooted the computer.

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I am not doubting all of your experience, but it sounds just rediculous. Why would any programmer have its installer put important files in the temp folder. Strange :wacko:

Edited by shanenin
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  • 4 weeks later...

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