Why do I have so many files?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dennis Marks
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Dennis Marks

When I run a scan with Norton it shows 788,507 files. Does this seem
unusually high? I see that there are a large number of files in
windows\installers. I am unable to navigate to that folder. It does not
show up as a normal, system, or hidden folder in windows.

I have run disk cleanup and most of the files it shows are in the
internet cache. Are there any other places where there may be a large
number of files?

My Adaware program show no problems and I have a registry cleaner that
shows no problems.

Am I worrying about nothing?

--
Dennis M. Marks

Disclaimer: The above is my opinion. I do not guarantee it. Be sure to
back up any files involved and use at your own risk. Batteries not
included. Not for internal use. Don't run with knives.
 
Dennis Marks said:
When I run a scan with Norton it shows 788,507 files. Does this seem
unusually high? I see that there are a large number of files in
windows\installers. I am unable to navigate to that folder. It does not
show up as a normal, system, or hidden folder in windows.

I have run disk cleanup and most of the files it shows are in the
internet cache. Are there any other places where there may be a large
number of files?

My Adaware program show no problems and I have a registry cleaner that
shows no problems.

Am I worrying about nothing?

--
Dennis M. Marks

Disclaimer: The above is my opinion. I do not guarantee it. Be sure to
back up any files involved and use at your own risk. Batteries not
included. Not for internal use. Don't run with knives.
Click to expand...

Yes, that Normal you don't need to worry about anything, what you should be
worry about suspicious Traffics, slow down of the PC suddenly.
The Files you see in Installer ($N) they are left behind from installing
Update from MS, they are there if you need to uninstall any of the updates
installed, rather than this they don't play any role I know on your PC just
sitting there.
You can see then if you turned the Show Hidden Files and folder from the
Folder Options ON.
HTH.
Regards,
nass
 
C:WINDOWS\Installer. Installer is a Hidden folder.

Start | Run | Type or paste: %windir%\Installer | Click OK

Using the method above it doesn't matter if Installer is hidden or not.

To avoid all kinds of errors with applications such as MS Office, leave the
C:\WINDOWS\Installer folder alone.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
Dennis said:
When I run a scan with Norton it shows 788,507 files. Does this seem
unusually high? I see that there are a large number of files in
windows\installers. I am unable to navigate to that folder. It does not
show up as a normal, system, or hidden folder in windows.

I have run disk cleanup and most of the files it shows are in the
internet cache. Are there any other places where there may be a large
number of files?

My Adaware program show no problems and I have a registry cleaner that
shows no problems.

Am I worrying about nothing?
Click to expand...

It doesn't make any sense, you shouldn't have that many files on an
"average" Windows XP installation. Open a Command Prompt session and
run a simple chkdsk on the drive (chkdsk without any switches) and see
what it reports as to the number of files on the disk. Maybe you have
the "Norton Protected Recycle Bin" on and every single file that you
have ever deleted is stored in there and Norton counts them as valid
files...

John
 
Dennis Marks said:
When I run a scan with Norton it shows 788,507 files. Does this seem
unusually high? I see that there are a large number of files in
windows\installers. I am unable to navigate to that folder. It does not
show up as a normal, system, or hidden folder in windows.

I have run disk cleanup and most of the files it shows are in the internet
cache. Are there any other places where there may be a large number of
files?

My Adaware program show no problems and I have a registry cleaner that
shows no problems.

Am I worrying about nothing?

--
Dennis M. Marks

Disclaimer: The above is my opinion. I do not guarantee it. Be sure to
back up any files involved and use at your own risk. Batteries not
included. Not for internal use. Don't run with knives.
Click to expand...

Two reasons you may have so many files is that you haven't cleared out the
browser caches, and they are overly large. By default, IE can allocate
gigabytes of space to files that should be temporary, and the XP "cleanup"
commands don't really clear them out. I usually set the IE cache to
perhaps 25 meg.

Get and run ccleaner (www.ccleaner.com) and let it remove temporary and
temporary internet files. Then check how many files are counted.

Running ccleaner to clear out the caches and reducing the size of the
browser caches can significantly reduce the time needed to run A/V scans.

HTH
-pk
 
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