temporary files and folders? (off topic) - http://www.mmcafe.com/ Forums

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Juke Joint Jezebel

2841th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"temporary files and folders? (off topic)" , posted Thu 29 Apr 09:50

does anyone know for certain if temporary files can be deleted without heavy repercussion? for example, typing *.tmp (file) or temp (folder) in search and just deleting them as is

i read/heard something about this five or six years ago, but that was a long time ago

countdown:
6 days until c: gets wiped

Replies:

Radish

2424th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(1):temporary files and folders? (off topic" , posted Thu 29 Apr 10:22

quote:
does anyone know for certain if temporary files can be deleted without heavy repercussion? for example, typing *.tmp (file) or temp (folder) in search and just deleting them as is

i read/heard something about this five or six years ago, but that was a long time ago

countdown:
6 days until c: gets wiped

I'm pretty sure those are just websites and files that your browser has cached. Assuming you are using I.E, I would go to tools->Internet Options->delete files button.

Juke Joint Jezebel

2842th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(2):temporary files and folders? (off topic" , posted Thu 29 Apr 15:30

yeah, those are some. but others are scattered and hidden in Windows, Program Files, and other directories. if they're not created by your browser, they're created by programs as a temporary whatever as the program does its business (installs itself, runs, etc)

hmmm

Kaepora

341th Post

Bronze Customer

"Re(3):temporary files and folders? (off topic" , posted Thu 29 Apr 16:11

You shouldn't have any problems deleting the files. Anything that is crucial to Windows should be pretty well hidden, assuming you're using 2000/XP.

Most likely, you won't notice anything when you delete it and the program will just create a new temp file when it needs it. Windows will create a new "Temp" folder when it needs one, and Winamp will create a new "WUtemp" folder for it's skin loading.

Worst case scenario is that whatever the running program is currently doing will not happen (file copying/downloading, saving, etc.) and the target might be corrupted. So don't delete the temp file MS Word creates in the folder the document is currently saved in unless you can live with the it being corrupted and unreadable.

Although, the programs that are creating/using them are supposed to delete them afterward anyway, so you really shouldn't have any that are older than your last successfull shutdown. Temp files that are older than your last reboot have probably already been forgotten by the program that created it and won't be looked at again.

Ammadeau

898th Post

Red Carpet Regular Member++

"Re(3):temporary files and folders? (off topic" , posted Thu 29 Apr 20:24

quote:
yeah, those are some. but others are scattered and hidden in Windows, Program Files, and other directories. if they're not created by your browser, they're created by programs as a temporary whatever as the program does its business (installs itself, runs, etc)

As long as you're not running any programs, you can delete every temporary file except for the swap file... and I'm not even sure if the comp will let you delete the latter anyway. The OS doesn't need any of those files to run.