What are these files in my TEMP directory??

  • Thread starter Thread starter makemefat
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makemefat

I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my cpu was telling me
that my 37gig hard-drive was full, so I went poking around, and in my
C:/Windows/TEMP folder, there were about 150 folders that each were
title something like "tmp000076e8"...always starting with 'tmp', then
some combination of letters and digits. Each folder contained a
single file (with the same title as the folder it was in) in a format
that my computer did not recognize that was between 180 and 400 MB in
size!!

Anyone know what these files were, and why my computer was creating
and storing them? (A new one was created every few days for some
reason). My understanding was that files are periodically created in
the TEMP directory, but are then self-deleted by the computer after a
short period of time...but these 150 files never seemed to delete
themselves, and hence they took up my whole hard drive!!

(I just deleted them, which freed up a ton of space, but i want to
know why my computer was creating them in the first place!!)
-mark
 
I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my cpu was telling me
that my 37gig hard-drive was full, so I went poking around, and in my
C:/Windows/TEMP folder, there were about 150 folders that each were
title something like "tmp000076e8"...always starting with 'tmp', then
some combination of letters and digits. Each folder contained a
single file (with the same title as the folder it was in) in a format
that my computer did not recognize that was between 180 and 400 MB in
size!!

Anyone know what these files were, and why my computer was creating
and storing them? (A new one was created every few days for some
reason). My understanding was that files are periodically created in
the TEMP directory, but are then self-deleted by the computer after a
short period of time...but these 150 files never seemed to delete
themselves, and hence they took up my whole hard drive!!
Click to expand...

Have you had programs crash, or do you shut down your computer without
properly closing programs? If so, that can leave temp files behind.

What was the extension of the files? If you don't have it turned on, you
need to go to Tools/Folder Options/View and uncheck 'Hide file extensions
for known file types.'
 
Have you had programs crash, or do you shut down your computer without
properly closing programs? If so, that can leave temp files behind.

What was the extension of the files? If you don't have it turned on, you
need to go to Tools/Folder Options/View and uncheck 'Hide file extensions
for known file types.'
Click to expand...

Yes, I frequently have to restart my computer because it crashes, and
also programs often freeze and I have to Ctrl-alt-delete-end program
to close them...so maybe you're right.

My computer doesn't recognize the file types at all...even when I go
to unhide the extension for 'known file types' (when i right
click...properties...it just says 'File', but no file type or
extension).

I guess the main question is, can I safely delete these large
(200-400MB) files without affecting the operation of my PC?
 
Of course you can delete files in TEMP. It was common practice in the
DOS/Win3 days because of constant crashing.

You can put this in a BAT file, then drag it to your startup folder (on
start menu):
rmdir /s /q %TEMP%
 
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