CSKCPA20 said:
Carey, thank you for your response. However, with these duplicate files
taking up 1.5gig of my memory and numbering 8,000 files, I'm a little
reluctant to just leave them alone. I do realize that I am probably not a
qualified person to determine which ones to remove, but if there are some
basic guidelines that would assist me in removing some of them to free up the
space I think I aught to get rid of them. Or is it common to have this many
duplicate files?
The files in the System32\dllcache folder are backup copies of critical system files that should not be deleted. Even if you do delete one of these files, it will immediately be replaced with another copy. This enables XP to automatically replace one of the system files in case it becomes corrupted. This is part of the system recovery that is built into XP.
Many programs will install their own copy of a Windows file into that programs folder, this is how these programs are designed to operate. Deleting one of these copied files will result in that program being disabled.
Deleting duplicate files is always a crapshoot. You need to have some really sophisticated software that can determine how each duplicate is used and configured. If System Mechanic cannot do this, then you cannot trust it to tell you which files can be safely deleted.
To free up hard drive space, the only files that you can safely delete are files in the Temp folders and some files with certain files extensions like .bak, .log, .tmp and others. You can also delete all but the most recent restore points in System Restore and lower the amount of disk space that SR uses.
Unless you are very low on disk space, it's likely that these duplicate files are not causing any slow downs or any other detrimental effects on the computer.
