I recall reading or hearing a while back that one can enhance the speed with which one’s computer operates by periodically cleaning out everything in the recyle bin, and C:\windows\cookies and C:\windows emporary internet files, as well as anything anywhere else that is a *.tmp. Beginning about a year ago, I started to do some or most of that every week or so, but I cannot really say that it’s had much effect on anything. Be that as it may, I have now discovered that there appear to be some files in those folders that simply won’t allow themselves to be deleted. I hadn’t noticed that before, and cannot imagine why it is suddenly occuring. Is there something special about temp internet files that refuse to be deleted? Are they essential to the well-being of my computer? If not, is there some way to override whatever it is that prevents their deletion? Is deleting such things as cookies, temp internet files, and *.tmps really all that important after all? For what it’s worth, I am rapidly running out of room on my harddrive, and it would seem that any little bit I can do to streamline things might be a good idea. Any thoughts?
You can get a 40G hard drive for under $100 now. Don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to delete 2k files.
And if you don’t want a new HD, try other storage media, like CDRs and Zip drives. If you have an Apple G-4 you can even get a rewriteable DVD that is bigger than your hard drive.
Getting rid of the trash files (yes, even the little ones)and periodically defragging your HD will definetly improve the speed of your PC for the simple reason the drive isn’t reading all over the disk for your program.
Personally, I go through all my unnecessary programs and delete them along with the temp files once a month and do a defrag. The PC stays pretty speedy.
As for the DVD-RW drives, its not just limited to Macs anymore. x86 PCs can now get them too. This is a good thing too as it will drive the prices from around $600 US now to substantially less before terribly long.
These are in no way a replacement for a good fast, big HD though.
Thanks. I definitely need a newcomputer, and I’ll address that situation shortly. In the meantime, however, what do you make of all these seeminlgy un-deletable files?
The files that you can’t delete are probably in use (at the time) by Windows itself. I have some lines in my autoexec.bat that automatically deletes temp files at boot-up, before Windows starts using them.
You can also use the M$ disk cleanup utility found under
Start\Programs\Accessories\System Tools\Disk Cleanup
It deletes stuff like temporary internet files, temp directory contents, old installs of windows, etc.