"~" files

[Guest]

I have almost 1300 files on my hard drive that begin with a tilde. They
seems to have been automatically generated by Windows. They have names such
as "~WRS0885.tmp" altho they need not be ".tmp" files. Since they are taking
up disk space. I wanted to delet them. However I get an error message that
says, "Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk." What
are these files, and if they are leftover junk, how can I delete them safely?

thanks for any ideas.

Bob

 

[Mike Williams]

I have almost 1300 files on my hard drive that begin with a tilde. They
seems to have been automatically generated by Windows. They have names such
as "~WRS0885.tmp" altho they need not be ".tmp" files. Since they are taking
up disk space. I wanted to delet them. However I get an error message that
says, "Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk." What
are these files, and if they are leftover junk, how can I delete them safely?

thanks for any ideas.

Bob

While these are *usually* temp files, they could have been created by
any application (MS Word is a major user of temp files) but without
knowing what software you run, it would be irresponsible to just delete
them all.

It will depend on *where* on your hard drive these files reside. Are
they in TEMP/TMP folders? How old are these files? Do a lot of them have
filesize zero?

I will assume that you have a regular backup system, so that if you did
delete the files and one was needed later, you could easily restore it.

 

[Guest]

Hi Mike, Thanks for your reply. The reason why I'm inclined to delet them is
because so many of them don't have a 0 file size and so they do take up space
on the disk. some are in a temp folder but not all. From your hesitancy it
makes me think that you think that the tilda is part of a legitimate file
name rather than a computer generated junk file. I have presumed that they
are all just junk, and it irritated me that I couldn't just delete them. My
computer takes about five minutes to boot up, so I'd like to slim it down and
to that end wanted to clean up the disk. However, I don't want to damage any
programs by deleting needed files. So I'm still puzzled about how to get
rid of these or if I should just let my disk get filled and slowed down by
lots of residual files that have gotten generated over the last year or so.
Thanks again for any thoughts you have.
Bob

 

[jren57]

I have almost 1300 files on my hard drive that begin with a tilde. They
seems to have been automatically generated by Windows. They have names
such
as "~WRS0885.tmp" altho they need not be ".tmp" files. Since they are
taking
up disk space. I wanted to delet them. However I get an error message
that
says, "Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk." What
are these files, and if they are leftover junk, how can I delete them
safely?

thanks for any ideas.

Bob

Try running disk cleanup, go to "My Computer" then on your C: drive icon,
right click and select "Properties" and click on ""Disk Cleanup" and that
will allow you clean up old temp files.

 

[Mike Williams]

Hi Mike, Thanks for your reply. The reason why I'm inclined to delet them is
because so many of them don't have a 0 file size and so they do take up space
on the disk. some are in a temp folder but not all. From your hesitancy it
makes me think that you think that the tilda is part of a legitimate file
name rather than a computer generated junk file. I have presumed that they
are all just junk, and it irritated me that I couldn't just delete them. My
computer takes about five minutes to boot up, so I'd like to slim it down and
to that end wanted to clean up the disk. However, I don't want to damage any
programs by deleting needed files. So I'm still puzzled about how to get
rid of these or if I should just let my disk get filled and slowed down by
lots of residual files that have gotten generated over the last year or so.
Thanks again for any thoughts you have.
Bob

My hesitancy is not that I *think* they are not junk - they almost
certainly are. BUT you've (still) given no indication of any other
aspect of them - location, size, apps commonly run - so I have no idea
of whether you have some custom app that thinks it's sensible to create
data files with that file convention in random folders. I've seen worse.

 

[witan]

My hesitancy is not that I *think* they are not junk - they almost
certainly are. BUT you've (still) given no indication of any other
aspect of them - location, size, apps commonly run - so I have no idea
of whether you have some custom app that thinks it's sensible to create
data files with that file convention in random folders. I've seen worse.

------------------------------------------------------------
I have seen the "~WRS****.tmp" files whenever Word exits abnormally. My
experience is that you can safely delete *all* such files, whereever
they be located.
Regards
witan

 

[Plato]

I have almost 1300 files on my hard drive that begin with a tilde. They
seems to have been automatically generated by Windows. They have names such
as "~WRS0885.tmp" altho they need not be ".tmp" files. Since they are taking

Nuke them.

 

[Alan Edwards]

See if this is relevant:

What is the ~ (tilde) file on my desktop?:
http://www.pchell.com/support/tildefile.shtml

....Alan