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All Things Microsoft => Microsoft Software => Topic started by: babypooh on 25 July 2002, 00:41

Title: .tmp Files - Safe to Delete?
Post by: babypooh on 25 July 2002, 00:41

I have heard that deleting all the .tmp files on your computer is safe and good to do. Does anyone know if this is really true or not?

Thanks in advance!

Baby Pooh

Title: .tmp Files - Safe to Delete?
Post by: badkarma on 25 July 2002, 01:19

tmp stands for temporary... that pretty much says it all I think  :D

Title: .tmp Files - Safe to Delete?
Post by: saddlemagic on 25 July 2002, 01:47

Yep, trash 'em.

Windows creates and uses .tmp files as it works, it is supposed to delete those files when the session is finished. Problem, Windows crashes so often it leaves lots of .tmp files behind.

When you boot/reboot your computer, if you find any .tmp files get rid of them.

That was a minor problem in schools when they were running Win3.0 & 3.1. Students shutting down computers without exiting Windows first. I had to service entire classrooms that used a breaker switch to turn the computers on and off. The default temp file was C:\dos\temp, I would check the size of the DOS directory and find 16 meg of data, that's a lot when DOS was only 3 meg big and your hard drive was 20 meg total.

Title: .tmp Files - Safe to Delete?
Post by: Calum on 25 July 2002, 02:39

also, delete ANYTHING in C:\Windows\Temp\ that is more than 24 hours old too. Also, most things called *.bak can be deleted too ( i use this convention myself to denote backup copies of files, but so do a lot of messy programs, backup files can safely be deleted once not needed anymore).

Title: .tmp Files - Safe to Delete?
Post by: pkd_lives on 25 July 2002, 18:46

It's safe to delete any temp file on windows. Most are made up of installations backups, large download storage files, if you reboot you PC then anything left in the temp file is pretty much deletable, as these files cannot be used to recover from the problems you may be facing.

I personally have a great system for getting rid of M$ temporary files. Under the dos command enter deltree /y C:\*.* this tends to remove them from the filesystem, so they get overwritten. As ever, it always a good idea to keep a copy of Linux nearby so you can recover, if windows starts having problems afterwards, which always seems to happen.