Default Folders

[Geoff Lane]

On Windows98 I used to clean up certain folders on occasions by just
deleting them as by default Windows rebuilt them if missing.

The ones I used to delete were Temporay Internet Files, Cookies, History as
well as the contents of TEMP as for some reason Windows did not rebuild the
TEMP folder.

Does XP recreate these folders?

Geoff Lane

 

[Guest]

Yes it does, however You might want to use Disk Cleanup Utility, it will delete files from these folders, and You'll be sure that nothing important will be deleted.

 

[David Candy]

Not temp.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Geoff,

They work very differently. In WinXP, the primary \temp folder is the one
under your user profile (C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\local
settings\temp), though the C:\Windows\temp folder is there for programs that
expect it. Deleting the contents is ok, but there isn't much point to merely
deleting the entire folder itself. The temp folder location is defined under
the environmental variables (control panel/system/advanced) for both the
user and the system. When you reboot, if it does not exist, it will rebuild
only the ones defined there.

For TIF's, history, and cookies, there are controls for these under Internet
Options in the Control Panel, same as in Win98. Again, deleting the entire
folder is quite pointless. Same as the \temp folder, you will also find
these under the user profiles.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Guest]

Hmm... ok now i'm confused =
What is its Temporary folder than when Temp is deleted? Cause the enviromental variables seem to point at C:\Windows\Temp as OS temporary files folder.

 

[David Candy]

The folder pointed to by TMP (the windows temporary variable), or it uses Temp (the Dos temp value) if TMP is not set, and if all else fails it uses Windows.

This is TMP, TEMP, and absence of both.

The missing folder will only be a problem when something tries to use it. Some (most) programs use a API function. They first ask windows what is the temp folder (it doesn't get checked it exists). Then they ask windows for a temp file name. But they have to specify where the want their temp folder. But mostly this is just convention. There is nothing special about a temp folder, Word creates most of it's temp files in the same dirextory as the open document (for speed reasons).

However you are releying on error checking in the application and if the programmer doesn't check for this the app will crash. If they check they may use the current directory instead.

 

[Geoff Lane]

Hi Geoff,
For TIF's, history, and cookies, there are controls for these under Internet
Options in the Control Panel, same as in Win98. Again, deleting the entire
folder is quite pointless. Same as the \temp folder, you will also find
these under the user profiles.

I did find that under Win98 although it appeared to delete it there
was still much data in the index.dat file after apparently deleting so
I tended to delet the entire folder which appeared to work.

I'm not paranoid, It's just if I want it deleted I actually want it
deleted.

Geoff Lane

 

[Alex Nichol]

What is its Temporary folder than when Temp is deleted? Cause the enviromental variables seem to point at C:\Windows\Temp as OS temporary files folder.

There is one there, there are also ones in each user's own space under
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp

Most things that use it for say expanding a set of files for a program
install will use that global one: when a user uses an application, it
*ought* to get the one in the user's personal space. But it may not.
And you can put a personal entry in the environmental variables section
in System - Advanced, and set it to the same place as the global

I clean Temp out with a little batch file run in the
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
entry of the registry