Temp folder

[emax6]

On my windows XP Pro I have a folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\Lou\Local Settings\Temp\

This folder contains about 5GB of a lot of anything.

Is it wise to delete the content of it, or am I going to have a catastrophy?
Thanks

 

[electronicsfreak]

Yes it is wise to delete things in there although some accounts hold a couple of folders in there such as temporary internet files. From what ive experienced those should remain however everything else can go. That is the second temp folder. Each user account will have one.

 

[firewolfrl]

I use CCleaner its free and works great on the temp files

http://www.ccleaner.com/

and its stable

 

[linney]

When did you last run Disk Cleanup, that will remove any of the old files in the Temp folder that can be safely deleted.

You can also manually remove everything in there if you want to because Windows will refuse to delete anything that is in use.

 

[Diancecht]

I'd go with first linney's option, but I'd do a little backup just in case. The theory is nice, but I've seen some programs stopping working after deleting temp files.

Cheers,
Dian

 

[Rick998]

By default, XP uses 2 separate areas for storing temp files - 'C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Temp' for users and 'C:\Windows\Temp' for System.

To keep things nice and clean in future, you could re-direct the TMP and TEMP environment variables to a folder of your choice then use a shutdown script to clean out the folder. We've used this method for years.

1) Create a folder called 'Temp' in the root of C:.

2) Use 'Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Advanced (tab) > Environment Variables (button)' and edit both the 'User' and 'System' variables to point to C:\Temp for both TEMP and TMP files.

Hope this helps...

 

[tfg13]

I agree with Linney, and also Rick998. The disk cleanup only goes after "not-in-use" files. Worst case scenario, you can choose to only compress old files, and that will include the Temp. Personally, I feel that if a program that I install still is utilizing the Temp folder, it is either old, or not really a "good" program, as the temp folder is exactly that (only temporary files).

Rick998's idea about the logoff script is something that I have done in the past as well.

 

[Diancecht]

There are a lot of old and "non good" programs out there that are neccesary for business processes. I was just pointing out that a little precaution is not bad.

Cheers,
Dian

 

[linney]

By default, Disk Cleanup will only remove temporary files that are more than a week old.

 

[emax6]

Thanks.
I tried a little of every thing and I retrieved 10Gb.
Thanks again.