How To Delete Temporary Files
When removing viruses and Spyware it becomes necessary to delete the temporary files on a computer. This video shows VideoJug users how they can delete the temporary files.
Step 1: Deleting Temporary Files:
Hi, this is Mr. Ford from mrfordsclass.com, and in this presentation, we're going to show you how to delete the temporary files off of your Windows XP computer. This is very important to do. It's part of the normal maintenance that I perform on computers when I'm trying to delete Spyware or viruses. One of the reasons that I do this that I've found helps me out is whenever you're running your antivirus scan or antispyware scan, you'll have a lot of junk held in these folders, and it's better to delete them, get rid of them than to have you scan it all and just waste the time. It's a great first step before you get into your antivirus scan and antispyware scan.
Step 2: Put PC in Safe mode:
One important thing is that you have to make sure you do this in safe mode. If you remember from other video presentation, safe mode is when you launch the very basic programs needed to make Windows work. Unfortunately, my recorder that I'm using to record my screen will not work in safe mode, so I'm having to do this in regular mode. So we're going to see an error message as we progress here. The first thing we want to do is we want to click on the Start button. We want to go to My Computer.
Step 3: Hidden files and folders:
Now before we continue, let's make sure we can see the hidden files and folders. This was presented in a different presentation, so I just want to briefly show it to you. Tools, Folder Options, View, Show Hidden Files and Folder, OK. I'm going to scroll down the C drive, right here, double click on it, and now I'm going to find my folder that says Documents and Settings. I am going to double click on it, and now I am going to try to find the folder that has my name on it.
Step 4: Accounts:
As you can see, you have several folders here. The Administrator that built the account. All Users means everyone on the computer. Owner. This is actually my personal account, so I'm not going to go into that one because I'm not logged in as that one. But I am logged on in this computer as mrfordsclass.com. So this is the folder I want. You want to find the folder you logged onto Windows with. So I double click on this one. And I'm am going to find the Local Settings folder right here. Notice it's kind of grayed out, it's kind of ghostly looking, as opposed to this one. This is a solid. This is kind of transparent. This means it's a hidden folder which we would not be able to see normally.
Step 5: Spy on the kids:
Also, parents, here's a little helpful suggestion for you. You see this one that says My Recent Documents. If you look in here you can see all the recent files that have been opened by your children. So if you're children are looking at inappropriate stuff, you might want to look in here and see what their last 10 or 20 or so files that they have opened. Most kids don't even know that's there, but now you do, so you can go hunting.
Step 6: Open up local setting:
So I'm going to open up Local Setting. I'm going to double click on it, and I'm going to find my Temp folder right here. I'm going to double click on my Temp folder, and as you can see, I've got files in here, temporary files. You can delete with confidence stuff that's in this Temp folder. I have yet to have a problem where I've deleted something in a Temp folder and I wished I didn't. You might even get an error message or a message that says, are you sure you want to delete this? This is a program. Click yes.
Step 7: Don't worry too much:
Again, I've never had an experience where I've ever regretted deleting that stuff. But of course, beware. You never know. The great thing about computers is it's never boring, because something strange always happens. But I would say by and large, with few exceptions, you can delete everything in this folder without worrying about it.
Step 8: Deleting temporary files:
So I am going to select everything in here. I can do it by clicking Edit and going down to Select All. If you look to the right, you can see a Ctrl+A. What does that mean? Well that's a shortcut. What I do, is I hold the Control button, that's what Ctrl means, and I push the A button. So I push down the Control button, hold it down, and then I push the A button. And that with select everything on that screen. Now I want to delete it. So I can click the Delete button, or Del button, depending on how they wrote it out on your keyboard. Or I can go over here and click the Delete the selected items button. What I'm going to do is I'm going to hit the Delete button on my keyboard.
Step 9: Thanks for watching:
It's going to give you confirmation. Here is a little bit of a possible weird thing happening. If you click on the Delete button and nothing happens and you have a bunch of files in there, understand that it's taking a couple of seconds for the computer to gear up to delete everything. So give it a couple seconds. It's not dead. It's not frozen if you click the delete button and nothing happens for a couple seconds. So I click the Delete button. I get a confirmation. Do you want to delete these? I say, Yes.Now I'm going to get an error message. I was expecting this, because I am not in safe mode. When you're in safe mode and, like I said, you're running the very bare minimums to get Windows going. Because I'm in a normal mode, some of these files are being used by programs that I currently have open and running. Camtasia is a program I'm using, and it's currently using that file, so I can't delete it. If I was in safe mode and this happened, then I might be a little more concerned, because that means that file or that folder is being used by another program. Again, safe mode means not a lot of stuff is running, so nothing should be using it. This is when I would delete everything around it, like this, and then run my antivirus and antispyware programs, and that should clear up whatever's left in that folder.After you're done deleting everything in here, you click the Close button. Right click on Recycle Bin. Empty Recycle Bin, and that is it. All my temporary files are deleted. Once again, if you have any that won't delete in your safe mode, you're going to then want to run your antivirus and antispyware programs. I've only had a few situations where a computer has been very, very infected, that I actually had to take out the hard drive and put it on a different computer, and delete temporary files that way. But I would say that about 80 to 90% of the consumers out there, if they do this, they should be OK. So I hope this helped you out, and I look forward to seeing you for our next video presentation. Good bye.
