just what exactly are "temporary files" in DiskCleanup?

[Tim.T]

When I rightclick a root drive, like C:, and choose DiskCleanup, it lists
all the usual suspects, "temporary internet files", etc, but it also lists
"temporary files". It won't show these files, it only gives a brief
description of what they are, which is vague at best. On this occasion it
said there were 53mb (53,300kb) of "temporary files". The thing is, in the
recent past when I have chosen to delete these, I have later found important
files files missing on C: drive and other drives; files that were just in
folders, and not destined to be deleted were suddenly gone. Not only that,
but often when I used DiskCleanup on all my drives it would list "temporary
files" numbering in GBs, literally 30,000,000kb and more (no I am not
misreading the figures, this is what it would say). On one occasion, when I
deleted these I lost GIGABYTES of video files that were on the drive.

It seems to be a file system issue, it's the only way I can explain it. It
is NOT because I literally have gigabytes of temporary files to be deleted.
For now I choose NOT to delete these files simply because I know they are
not temporary nor unimportant. But for some reason XP is flagging them as
temporary and safe to delete, even when there are hardly any "tmp" files on
my drives in the first place.

Any ideas what could be causing this? For a while I thought maybe System
Restore was causing it but it seems to happen regardless of whether System
Restore is off or on. I just know it isn't normal.

Tim

 

[DL]

They are temp files located in the %temp folder.
Such files can be created by installations, apps you run etc

If you have vid files in the temp folder that is usually because they were
saved there, Perhaps however / with whatever app, you are creating the vid
files doesnt have its options set correctly

From Start>Run '%temp' OK , without the quotes you can then see what is
If you truly have 30gb of files in this folder something is not quite right

 

[Gerry]

Tim

You are highlighting a known problem area. One problem is that if the
files are accessed in the last 7 days Disk CleanUp passes them by. Some
time ago there was a prolonged argument over whether a users anti-virus
programmes changed the modified date when it did a scan. Many of us were
sceptical but the two sides to the argument never conceded the other was
right or wrong.
http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=72280640916365&mkt=en-US&lang=en-US&w=22107e9d&FORM=CVRE5

You would find using cCleaner gets better results ( save for removing
surplus restore points -the More Options tab in Disk CleanUp) than Disk
CleanUp.

Try cCleaner (freeware) which does a more thorough job than Disk
CleanUp.
http://www.ccleaner.com/ccdownload.asp
http://www.ccleaner.com/

With any cleaner you need to proceed with caution. To be safe you
should create a restore point before using cCleaner. cCleaner also
offers backup before removal.

When using cCleaner think twice before checking Autocomplete Form
History under Internet Explorer. You do get a warning but this one has
irritating consequences. You may need to restore your system's
recollection of passwords after use so keep a record off computer so
that they can easily be re-entered.

Leave the Scan for Issues option alone.


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Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
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