Number 217 - June 2001
Clearing Out McGee's Closet1
by Don Edrignton, PC Chat, Jan 2, 2001
    Have you made a New Year's resolution to clean up your hard drive and get rid of the unwanted files that may be cluttering it up? A good way to start is clear out your "TEMP" files, These are files which are created in the background when you use some of your programs--and they can be safely deleted at any time. They normally get stored in a folder named "Temp" which you can find by getting into Windows Explorer. Right-click Start, and choose Explore -or press your "Windows" and "E" keys simultaneously.

    Oddly enough, you probably have two "Temp" files on your computer. The one inside your "C:\Windows" folder is the one that normally contains these surplus files. The other is listed directly under your "C" drive, and should be looked into as well.

    After locating the target "Temp" folder, double-click it to display its contents. Then go to Edit, Select All -- or do Ctrl+A. Hit your Delete key to get rid of the files. If you see a message saying certain files can't be deleted unless you take certain steps -- just follow the prompts.

    Directly below the "C:\Windows\ Temp" folder you'll see a folder named "Temporary Internet Files." These are files you accessed on the Web at one time or another, and which were copied to your hard drive to make them more quickly reaccessible. These files are stored in a "cache" which only holds so many files, and whose oldest files will eventually be dumped as new ones are added. Therefore, deleting these files does little to free up hard disk space, since the cache will eventually fill up again.

    Nonetheless, some folks have their own reasons for wanting to purge these files. Anyway, if you select all the files with "Ctrl+A" and hit your Delete key, it may look like nothing happened. However, if you exit the folder and then double-click it again, you'll see that it's been emptied.

    Getting back to "Temp" files, there may be some stored in other places on your hard drive, Most will have a ".TMP" extension and many will begin with the "~" tilde character. You can locate these files by going to Start, Find, Files & Folders and typing in *.TMP. The asterisk acts as a "wild card" which will locate all files with a .TMP extension. If you try to delete one of
these files and get a message saying "Access Is Denied" it usually means that the file is currently in use. For instance, if you have an MS-Word document open, it will very likely have a "TEMP" file in use at the same time, which you won't see because it's working in the background. After you close the Word file, the TEMP file gets sent to the "C:\Windows\Temp" folder, from whence you should eventually delete it.

    Another way to clean up your hard drive is to delete any programs you don't use. Most applications come with an "Uninstall.exe" file that can be found in the program's main folder. This file will sometimes be named "Unwise.exe" in a cute attempt to keep you from uninstalling the program. Anyway, if the unwanted program doesn't list such a file, it can still be uninstalled by going to My Computer, Control Panel and clicking on Add/Remove Programs. Click on the target program and then click on Install/Uninstall. Follow the prompts when asked if you're sure you want to uninstall the program.

    It's worth noting that merely finding a program's main folder and "deleting" it is NOT the same as "uninstalling" the application. When programs are first installed, some of their files are placed in different locations on your hard drive. Using an "Uninstall" command is what's needed to find and delete all pertinent files.

TOGGLE Editor's Note:
    Looking at the title of this piece you can see a January date, hence the reference to New Year's resolutions. Most of us follow this or a similar practice to clear our browser's cache on a regular basis, timed to our frequency or constancy of Internet use.
    If you have found the advice given in the article easy to understand and follow, and if you are Internet-enabled, you might want to visit the author's website at www.pcdon.com and save it in your favorites list. We found it by following a link from another article printed in an earlier issue of this newsletter. We think it's worth a visit.

    1 Old Timer's will remember Fibber McGee's closet from 30s and 40s radio as well as 50s TV (a sound man's dream).
  Number 217 - June 2001