Deleting Cookies

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rob K
  • Start date Start date
R

Rob K

I have an older PC. And am rather new at this. When I look
up things that are still stored on the PC I locate
thousands of cookies and files that date back far before I
had this PC. Many of the things go back as far as 1997. I
found one file with hundreds of files(or cookies?) of
files that have been modified under spyware. My question
is,would it be safe to delete these files without harming
the functioning of my PC.Orginally this PC operated with
Windows 95. However since that time it has been updated to
Windows 98. And I have installed Windows 2000
Professional.Therefore although I have already deleted
many files by sending them to the recycle bin and
delelting them without a problem, my questions are: Does
that eliminate them completly and give me more space on my
hardrive? And how do I know for sure what files are safe
to delete? This PC has been owned by several different
people. Please try to keep your response simple and not to
technical as I am really rather new at this. Any help you
could give me would be appreciated. Thank You
 
-----Original Message-----
I have an older PC. And am rather new at this. When I look
up things that are still stored on the PC I locate
thousands of cookies and files that date back far before I
had this PC. Many of the things go back as far as 1997. I
found one file with hundreds of files(or cookies?) of
files that have been modified under spyware. My question
is,would it be safe to delete these files without harming
the functioning of my PC.Orginally this PC operated with
Windows 95. However since that time it has been updated to
Windows 98. And I have installed Windows 2000
Professional.Therefore although I have already deleted
many files by sending them to the recycle bin and
delelting them without a problem, my questions are: Does
that eliminate them completly and give me more space on my
hardrive? And how do I know for sure what files are safe
to delete? This PC has been owned by several different
people. Please try to keep your response simple and not to
technical as I am really rather new at this. Any help you
could give me would be appreciated. Thank You
Many of these files showed up when I did a search under
Click to expand...
File containing Gator in the text.
 
You can use a spyware remover. Also go into internet explorer and you can
delete the cookies and file from there. Generally anything with a url or is
in the temporary internet or other tmp folders are safe to delete. If you
are really concerned then I suggested formatting and reinstall from media.
 
Hi, Rob.

In Internet Explorer, click Tools | Internet Options... On the first
(General) tab, the middle section is for Temporary Internet Files. As you
can see, there are buttons to delete cookies and files, and one for
Settings..., which has more buttons to view files and "objects" such as
cookies.

You can spend some time here exploring just what is in all these files, but
my suggestion in your case is just to "blow them all away" by clicking both
delete buttons, including the offline content on the screen that pops up.
These are, after all, TEMPORARY Internet files and should be cleaned out
from time to time. In fact, you might want to click the Advanced tab,
scroll all the way down to Security, and check the box that says to Empty
the TIF when IE is closed. Especially with broadband, we can download most
content again almost as quickly as we can recover it from the cache.

These TIF files and folders are managed differently from "normal" Windows
files, and don't respond as we expect to "normal" Windows commands like
delete. It's usually best to manage them from IE. But while you are in
that Settings window, check out the Current location for the folder. Then,
if you find TIFs in any other location on your HD, delete those with the
normal tools; if they are not in the Current location, they must be
leftovers from some previous life. They have lost their special TIF
attributes and are just taking up space now.

RC
 
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