Jake's Tech Talk Temp Files

My hard drive needs work. What should I do?

In general, there are three steps for preventative maintenance. Taken in order, these are:

1. Delete temporary files
2. Run Scandisk
3. Run Disk Defragmenter.

In the following sections, these steps are discussed individually.

Temporary Files

What are temporary files?

Many programs, including WordPerfect, create copies of data files as they are created or modified to allow for undoing a change to the file. These files are normally deleted by the program when the program is exited. If the program is terminated in an abnormal manner, the normal exit procedure to delete the temporary files is bypassed. The presence of old, undeleted temporary files has a tendency to confuse the parent program, and can contribute to slowdowns or lockups of the system.

How do I remove temporary files?

Use either My Computer or Windows Explorer to browse the disk drive. Temporary files have a file extension of .tmp, and are normally located in the Temp folder in Windows or in the Temp folder under drive C:. Once you've located the temp files, mark them with the mouse and hit the Delete key.

In Windows 98, a new feature called Disk Cleanup is available from the My Computer window. By right-clicking on a drive icon, then selecting Properties, you get the Drive Properties window. Just below the pie chart showing drive usage is a button for Disk Cleanup. Disk Cleanup will, optionally, remove unneeded files from the Temporary Files folder, the Recycle Bin, the Temporary Internet Files folder, and the Downloaded Program Files folder.

Some programs maintain their own set of temporary files, including Netscape. To empty the caches in Netscape, click on Edit, Preferences, Advanced, Cache. Then click on the buttons to empty the memory and disk caches.

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