Vista - Safe to delete? Temporary Internet Files

After realising how much my hard drive was full, I tried looking around
what was taking all the place.
After unhiding the files in
"_C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows_", I was shocked to
see that the folder Temporary Internet Files
(_C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary_Internet_Files_)
had over 46000 files, taking over 86GB of my hard drive.
To my knowledge, "Temporary Internet Files" are *temporary* and safe to
delete. Since my knowledge is restricted and may be very wrong, I
decided to ask you guys (or girls) if it really is.

Thats it and thanks!

EDIT/UPDATE: After opening the folder, I did CTRL+A to select all the
files and saw that even though both hidden and protected files are set
to be shown, I had only around 2900 files selected instead of the 46000
I expected. Anyone can help me with this?


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SilentBob
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Best is to run CCleaner ( Download CCleaner 2.21.940 - FileHippo.com ). That will safely remove the temporary files that are not needed.

Safe to delete.Go for it

--
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.

"SilentBob" <SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx

If you are using Internet Explorer, go to Tools / Options and delete these
items from there. You can also adjust your settings so that the temporary
items do not grow to this size in the future.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"SilentBob" <SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx

You could also try deleting them via Internet Explorer| Tools| Internet
Options| General tab| Delete| Check Temporary Internet files| Delete. That
should get them out.

"SilentBob" <SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx

Hi, Bob.

After following the other advice to clean out your unneeded TIF, you can do
a few things to prevent future buildup.

These TIF file folders are special and can't always be handled by "normal"
Windows tools. They are best managed by settings in Internet Explorer,
which creates these files and maintains them.

First, in Internet Explorer, click Tools | Internet Options and have a look
at the first tab, "General". (I'm running Win7 RC and IE8. You didn't say
what Windows and IE versions you are using, so what you see may be slightly
different from what I
see, but the general idea is the same in any version of IE.) In the second
section there (I see "Browsing History"; you may see a different label.)
there are a couple of boxes, "Delete..." and "Settings". In IE8 there is
also a new checkbox, for "Delete browsing history on exit", that wasn’t
there in previous versions; check this. If this box is not there in your
version, don't worry; we'll take care of that in another way later.

Then click Settings to go to the next screen. You can make several possible
tweaks here. First, you can limit the size of your TIF. I'm using 50 MB,
the lowest "recommended" size for MY computer; you can set this to suit the
way YOU use your computer and the Internet.

Under Current Location, you can "Move folder..." to wherever you'd like. If
you have only a single volume (Drive C: ?) on a single HDD, there's not much
use in changing this location. But if you have another volume with plenty
of room, this setting lets you put your TIF into X:\TIF, for example. (IE
will automatically create a subfolder named "Temporary Internet Files" in
the folder you select, so give your "parent" folder a nice short name.) But
this will get all those space-hungry TIF files out of Drive C:. As you will
be informed, the location won't be changed until you log off and start IE
again.

CAVEAT: This does not just log you out of IE when you click OK. It logs
you out of Windows! So be sure you have closed OTHER applications that you
have running before clicking OK! (I forgot just now and had to recover the
draft of THIS reply after logging in to Windows and restarting WLMail.)

One final tweak, even if you checked the box I mentioned before: Go back to
the General tab and click Advanced. Scroll way down to the bottom of the
list, under Security, and check the box that says "Empty Temporary Internet
Files folder when browser is closed".

All this advice should slim down your TIF and keep it as slim and trim as
possible.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100

"SilentBob" <SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx"SilentBob" <SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:SilentBob.3uowbb@xxxxxx

Thanks for the replys, but I still have a problem. I cleaned the folder
with Internet Explorer (ver. 7 btw) and it deleted most of the files in
the folder. What's remaining are a few cookies. However, the folder
itself still is about 86GB and Right-Click+Properties says it has around
23000 files, even though there are only 27 txt files, around 1 KB each.
I have both system files and hidden files set to be shown. Running on
Windows Vista.

Thanks for the help, I really don't understand where those 86GB of
precious hard drive space are getting used

Also, IE is set to keep 50MB of cache.


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If you want to get rid of the cookies, you can either use the CCleaner that I linked above or type SHELL:COOKIES into the Start/search field and hit Enter. That brings up the cookies folder where you can delete them manually.
But there are probably a lot of other temporary files (other than from IE). That's why I would use the CCleaner that will get rid of those too. 86GBs is a lot of stuff. They must have accumulated over quite some time.

PS: CCleaner is safe to run. I never had a problem with it nor did anybody I know.

Thanks whs, CCleaner was what I needed to use


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SilentBob
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No problem. Any time.