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is it safe to empty this folder?


colore

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Hi Colore,It should be safe to delete any files in that directory. As the directories name suggests... only temporary files should be sent there.

However, there are some programs that send log files to temp directories and you will not be able to delete them unless you go into safe mode..but you need not to worry for that.

If you are looking to delete the "temporary internet files" folder contents then the suggested method is via Internet Explorer's TOOLS > Options > Browsing History / delete... > etc...

The "Temp" folder next to it is usually used for programs while they are being installed and what you see are the leftovers that should've been cleaned out but were not...

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  • 1 month later...

You need to double click it.

You can place a shortcut in your startup folder and it will automatically run every time you log in to your computer. You can also add it to scheduled tasks...Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\System Tools\Scheduled Tasks.lnk

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For years, and through several OS's I've always used batch files to clean up the junk on my PC.

Put one line in the batch file, for every folder in the HD that you want to clean out.

Then put a shortcut to that batch file on your desktop, so you can run it whenever you are performing your regular HD maintenance.

Also, a shortcut to that batch file, put in your "Startup" folder, gives you a FREE Cleanup on every boot-up.

I call that my FREE Maid Service. I also do that for every one of my customers.

A Sample of my own XPCleanup.bat program follows:

Rem: The Deltree.exe command must be in your %systemroot%\system32 before this program will run.

Rem: This command can be found in any system running Windows 98 or ME.

Rem: the /y after deltree tells deltree to execute the command without stopping to ask if it's OK.

Rem: The lines that do not adhere to the DOS 8+3 file-name structure must be in quotes.

@Echo off

cls

deltree /y C:\temp\*.*

deltree /y "%systemroot%\temp\*.*"

deltree /y "%systemroot%\system32\config\systemprofile\cookies\*.*"

deltree /y "%systemroot%\SYSTEM32\config\systemprofile\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*.*"

deltree /y "%systemroot%\Prefetch\*.*"

deltree /y "C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*.*"

deltree /y "C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\History\History.IE5\*.*"

My actual batch file is much longer, as there are MANY folders on the HD where windows or other programs store their junk files, .bak files, .tmp files, .log files, etc. I even delete the contents of my AV program's Virus Vault. My total batch file is over 30 lines long.

Deltree is so versatile, that you can use it to delete just one file or a group of similar files from a directory.

For those afraid or unwilling to use Deltree.exe, a work around does just fine. An Example:

Echo y| Del "C:\temp\*.*"

I use the above syntax in my batch file for Windows 7. (Win-7 doesn't seem to like Deltree.exe) :whistle:

Writing your own cleanup batch file is much safer than running some packaged programs, because you can specify exactly what gets removed.

Cheers Mates! Happy Thanksgiving!

Andromeda (aka, The Doctor ) B)

Edited by Andromeda43
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please post the full batch

Pointless IMO. A batch file was a half-decent way to do this at some point, like 10 or 15 years ago (pretty much everybody did it this way back then). Now there's FAR better tools readily available for free, like CCleaner or Comodo System Cleaner or nCleaner or fcleaner and probably several others. They all do this stuff and more, have a good looking & easy to use GUI (which also makes it easy to opt-out/in of certain stuff, or preview changes), it will run in 2 clicks whenever you want (or automated/on startup if you opt-in), they also clean a whole lot of other junk (like MRU entries and jump lists -- not the pinned items of course), they automatically detect dozens of popular apps and cleans what those leave behind too... And you don't have to maintain anything, the updates take care of that. Batch files are best left where they belong: the past.

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interesting

please post the full batch

thanks

That wouldn't do you or anyone else any good, because so many of the lines in my batch file involve paths and folders not present in any other PC.

What I've shown here is only a SAMPLE and not what you should be using on your own PC. OK?

Why bloat your HD with "Programs" to do what you can do with what's already a part of your OS.....and has been for decades.

I just found out yesterday, that Macromedia Flash stores links to many websites in its own folders. MORE JUNK!

I've added those folders to my XPCleanup.bat program.

Just for fun, do a 'Search' for "www" and you'll be horrified at what shows up. :thumbup:rolleyes::whistle::realmad:

C:\Documents and Settings\Alex\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\7WG7TUGE

C:\Documents and Settings\Alex\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macrodedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys

Compare the above mentioned paths to those in your own PC. This is MY path, yours, will of course, be different.

Another way to fully utilize what's already given to you (by MS) for FREE, is to run the Disk Cleanup routine in Extended mode.

That greatly increases the number of folders that will be cleaned out. (DO NOT SELECT THE SETUP.LOG FOLDER FOR DELETION)

The shortcut, to run Disk Cleanup in the Extended mode is:

%SystemRoot%\System32\Cmd.exe /c Cleanmgr /sageset:35 & Cleanmgr /sagerun:35

As with many command line entries, shortcuts, etc., every character and every space is important, so if you want to use this shortcut, copy and paste it into a desktop shortcut....do not type it unless you fully understand the syntax being used.

The above program shortcut not only cleans out C: but all other connected drives as well.

Thorough HD cleaning can be and usually IS a complicated process. Before I do a Ghost Backup of my own HD, I spend several minutes doing a very thorough HD cleaning. I remove the pagefile and all the OLD System Restore Points. By doing this cleanup, I decrease the volume of stuff going into my Ghost backup by over 4 gigabytes.

When I'm making the first call to a customer's PC, I perform a very thorough cleanup of the HD and it's not uncommon for me to remove well over 100,000 junk files using several different programs, batch files, etc.

Sorry guys..... I didn't mean for this to run so long.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

B)

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Why bloat your HD with "Programs" to do what you can do with what's already a part of your OS..

Absolute nonsense.

You're saying we should write obsolescent batch files (as if it was still 1985), just because a archaic shell is actually able to delete files? We should waste countless hours of our precious time so we can save on a minuscule fraction of a single penny worth of disk space?

Every single time you'd install any new app or even just a new version of an app (every other day or just about), you'd have to waste a lot of time seeing where it may create any kind of junk files (a colossal waste of time) whereas a cleaner app already has other people wasting their time so you don't have to waste yours (and they usually do a much better job of it too), and then manually updating it on all your computers (cleaner apps auto-update in one click, no need to copy stuff by hand), it will always miss a LOT of really nice and/or important features such as cleaning MRUs from the registry or jump lists, previewing what will be deleted and how much space would be freed, being able to quickly select or deselect some stuff you may want to clean or not this particular time with one click (checkboxes) which is very handy, the lack of an "undo" feature, dealing sanely with different versions of OS'es (XP/Vista/7 -- both x86 and x64) from different locales that store stuff in different places (especially if you keep in mind things like filesystem virtualization, or even just ealing with things like randomly-named Firefox profiles) and also providing a localized GUI for it too, sane integration with the OS like an actual GUI (eye candy is always nice) or being accessible from a right click on the recycle bin, automatically popping up a UAC dialog if necessary (to clean stuff that needs this level of access) and so on, a decent installer and uninstaller, etc. Batch files have NOTHING on any single cleaner app I've ever used. I've stopped living in the past and no more waste my time over this pointless endeavor.

...and has been for decades.

Very much like why I use Photoshop despite mspaint having been there for decades, or why I use notepad++ despite notepad (and edit.com until recently) having been there for decades and so on: the new apps are FAR better in every way. If anything, you just showed that it's outdated and not exactly great.

That wouldn't do you or anyone else any good, because so many of the lines in my batch file involve paths and folders not present in any other PC.

Which just goes to show how little it has in terms of portability, versatility, reuse, etc. Cleaner apps will auto-detect your installed apps regardless, and will work on any PC. With a batch file, you'll essentially be maintaining different batch files for every single PC (workload decupled...)

I just found out yesterday, that Macromedia Flash stores links to many websites in its own folders. MORE JUNK!

I've added those folders to my XPCleanup.bat program.

Which only goes to show it requires a lot of (error prone) hard work *and* that you can easily miss basic stuff -- whereas with nice apps, that was already done for you ages ago (comodo privacy cleaner auto-selects deleting flash cookies *and* the cache)

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I guess the title is more than suitable for this: some time ago I read in some post here about the possibility to delete the contents of $hf_mig$, so: is it possible to also manually delete the contents of ie7updates and/or ie8updates that are also found in the WINDOWS directory? Cheers

Edited by Sp0iLedBrAt
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Why bloat your HD with "Programs" to do what you can do with what's already a part of your OS..

Absolute nonsense.

You're saying we should write obsolescent batch files (as if it was still 1985), just because a archaic shell is actually able to delete files? We should waste countless hours of our precious time so we can save on a minuscule fraction of a single penny worth of disk space?

Absolute nonsense.

You're saying that we should clean our PC's ourselves :w00t:, just because you cannot hire a competent IT professional to do that for you?

We should waste countless hours of our precious time so we can save on a minuscule fraction of a single penny worth of hired IT technician?

;)

jaclaz

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