What Are Temporary Files and How to Delete?

Temporary files are created when you download or install “Uninstall the software”, opening the e-email and files of instant messaging program or transferring files. Typically, the program creating temporary files will delete them upon completion. But sometimes, these temporary files will be preserved.

The reasons for them to be retained may be a lot, for example, the program may be interrupted before it completes installation or it may crash when you restart your computer. The temporary files will also be created when you surf the Internet. Web browser like Internet Explorer will save the cache of web page on your hard drive in order to increase later browsing speed.

Overview

After a period of time, if these obsolete temporary files are not cleared for a long time, they may hold large space of hard disk, accumulate the hard disk fragmentation and reduce system performance. It’s safe to delete these temporary files, but Windows won’t let you delete any content which is being used by the open programs.

Deleting these files, you are able to release the valuable hard disk space for other uses. It’s the simplest way to clean up computer and optimize its performance by deleting these files once a month with the help of Windows Live Safety Scanner. Take temporary files generated by surfing the Internet for an example:

When we are online, Cookies will record our identity and other information at the same time in order to increase the access speed of our visiting the next time. Temporary files of Internet will also record the sites we have visited. This is not just a challenge for our personal privacy. What’s more, if we don’t promptly clean up these records, they will take up more and more disk space. As a result, this will reduce the browsing speed.

Deleting Method

For some users, they may not know the location of this folder. If these users don’t install the special optimization software to delete theses temporary files, is there a way for them to quickly and manually remove these files? Here we’d like to introduce a method.

In fact, the key of this method lies in how to quickly navigate to the temporary files. Users should open the “Explorer” or “My Computer” and then input “%temp%” in the address bar. They need to press “Enter” to open this folder, because they can see the exact location of this folder after pressing “Enter”. Then users can select the files and press “Delete” to put these files in the Recycle Bin. If users press “Shift + Del”, they can completely remove the files from the hard disk.

Also in this post, we introduce a way to delete temporary files to release more space for your computer hard drive: 3 Ways to Help You Get out of Low Disk Space Warning in Windows 7/8.1/10. You can read it to get some useful information.

Another way for users to open the temporary files is that they can click “Start/Run” first and then enter “%temp%”. In general, all files in this folder can be deleted safely. Sometimes, some files can’t be deleted because they are being used. At this time, you can restart your computer immediately and remove them.

In addition, the above method is applicable to many Windows systems like Win2000/98/NT and so on. Although users who are not familiar with the Windows system, can also quickly and manually clear unwanted temporary files by this way without using any other tools.

Alternately, users can use 360 security guards to clean up rubbish or trace. They can also click the browser, such as Window of the world and then choose “clean computer” to clear the rubbish. If users use Window, they can click “tool – ie Options” or they can click “tool- ie Options- internet Properties dialog box- Browse history” and then delete temporary files. What’s more, they can directly right click Internet Explorer on the desktop; choose “properties” and then repeat the previous actions.