Temp folder just keeps building up

Kees · Jan 4, 2024

JohnnyGui said:
@Kees

I am wondering whether Disk Cleanup or the option via Windows Settings actually cleans all the temp files in your cases.

As the TEMP folder on my system is deleted every startup, I don't need any program to 'clean' the temp files.
It will always start clean, whatever was on it before.

The TEMP folder in the Windows system folder has only one file: MpSigStub.log, size about 400 kB.
That's the Defender update log file. That's all!

But as you are trying to find a program to delete or clean the TEMP folder in normal circumstances, my method does not matter, unless you would be willing to use a Ramdrive as well. So I won't interfere here anymore!

garioch7 · Jan 4, 2024

@JohnnyGui ,

Since you "pinged" me, I decided to run a test. Normally, I run System Ninja Pro first and then Windows Disk Cleanup (CleanUp System Files is selected) every Friday afternoon on both of my computers.

Minutes ago, I ran Windows Disk Cleanup first. It reported 114 MB to be cleaned. I let it clean.

Then I ran System Ninja Pro (the free version should do the same thing).

It would appear to me that Windows Disk Cleanup is missing a lot. Look at the "Scan Results," lower right.

I suggest that you download the free version of System Ninja and try it. What have you got to lose?

I formerly used CCleaner, but it became too bloated, and I don't entirely trust the new ownership (personal opinion - please don't flame me).

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

glasskuter · Jan 4, 2024

Ccleaner or Glary Utilities has always and still does the job for me.

abactuon · Jan 4, 2024

Kees said:
The TEMP folder in my system is deleted automatically every system-startup.
How did I do that?

I have 32 GByte Memory, of which I assigned 8 GB for a RamDisk space (I called it drive Z:).
I do that by means of the (freeware) program ImDisk, of which the (main) settings are:

View attachment 83088
View attachment 83089

Every startup a new TEMP folder will be made and every shut down the TEMP folder will be deleted.
I never experienced any problems by doing this and the size of the TEMP folder stays within reasonable amounts.
The biggest space consumer is my anti-virus program. The total space used for that is about 170 MByte.

The other available space I use for having a work area, which automatically will be destroyed when restarting or shutting down.
Files that are having confidential contents (for instance pdf's containing bank overviews), I always download to that area and read-protect them before moving them to a normal data folder.

But I use the space as well for scratch area for my photo-editing software. No SSD 'consumption' for that purpose!

This is only for the main temp folders.
They used to be the main ones, now many others are used.

Others can be redirected, for example for Edge:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" -Name "DiskCacheDir" -Type String -Value "Z:\Temp\Edge"

Kees · Jan 5, 2024

abactuon said:
Others can be redirected, for example for Edge

While I am not using Edge (use it only for test if something is not reachable in Firefox) I still do that by means of CCleaner. Checked that now: only 15 MByte . Not worth to change a registry value for that. But it could be useful for other purposes.

BTW. I am already using a symbolic link to redirect the scratch area of the TomTom Update program to another partition on another drive. I did that before as well for Google Earth, but as I did not use that program anymore I deleted it from my system.

allan · Jan 5, 2024

With no offense intended to anyone, I don't get why it's so hard to open your file manager, go to the temp folder, click on "select all" and delete. Takes me all of 15 seconds at most - probably less. I really never understood why a 3rd party temp file deleting tool is required.

Kees · Jan 5, 2024

If you just try to delete all, you may have messages like: 'can't delete, file in use' and that repeatedly.
I get such messages for temp files of the antivirus program I use and for some other programs as well.
How should I know what may be deleted and what should stay?
When you would yet delete files that are in use (using some trick), you may corrupt the (present) functioning of the system.
Programs that do the deletion for you (like CCleaner) always keep such files intact (I suppose).

allan · Jan 5, 2024

It's very simple. If you've recently installed an update, you need to reboot since there may be some files in temp needed to complete the installation on a reboot. After that, delete whatever is in the temp folder(s). Any files in use because open programs need them simply won't be deleted until the next boot, when they should disappear and be recreated on their own as needed. You CAN'T delete temp files activley in use, so there's nothing to worry about.

Winuser · Jan 5, 2024

I found something very interesting after reading this thread. Using several methods of removing temp files, System - Storage was still showing over 8 GBs of temp files. The culprit turned out to be that the files in my download folder are listed as temp files. Sorry to tell you MS, to me they are not temp files and shouldn't be included.

BamaInArk · Jan 5, 2024

Winuser said:
I found something very interesting after reading this thread. Using several methods of removing temp files, System - Storage was still showing over 8 GBs of temp files. The culprit turned out to be that the files in my download folder are listed as temp files. Sorry to tell you MS, to me they are not temp files and shouldn't be included.

It's interesting how they have listed under Temporary Files....Temporary Files which is the true Temp files. I would consider files in the Download Folder as Temporary as well. But you can Unselect that one to show.

Winuser · Jan 5, 2024

BamaInArk said:
It's interesting how they have listed under Temporary Files....Temporary Files which is the true Temp files. I would consider files in the Download Folder as Temporary as well. But you can Unselect that one to show.

I'm looking at if differently. I personally downloaded them. If I didn't want them I would delete them when I was finished with them. I wouldn't mind so much if they were listed as a suggestion to free up space. IMHO, they don't belong in the Temp list.

Winuser · Jan 6, 2024

Winuser said:
I found something very interesting after reading this thread. Using several methods of removing temp files, System - Storage was still showing over 8 GBs of temp files. The culprit turned out to be that the files in my download folder are listed as temp files. Sorry to tell you MS, to me they are not temp files and shouldn't be included.

I found a solution. I moved all of my User folders from my C: drive to my internal HDD drive. My downloads are no longer listed.

TM21 · Jan 6, 2024

After reading through this entire thread, I have just ONE (1) question....
Which Temp folder are you talking about? In Windows there are a dozen or more Temp folders. They're Everywhere!!!
There is NO ONE (1) temp folder.

And even worse, browsers and some other programs DO NOT list their Temporary Files as .tmp. Some, like Firefox, are encoded with very elaborate alpha-numeric names. And most of the popular Cleanup programs do not remove those files, as they can build up at the rate of thousands a day. Windows also does not touch them!
Then 'Edge' creates a lot of .old files, besides its Temporary Internet Files.

To get rid of the easy stuff, I start off my own Cleanup.bat program with these two lines:

del /f /s /q C:\*.tmp
del /f /s /q C:\*.old

Those two lines can be run from a CMD prompt, or in a Batch File.

That gets rid of the easy stuff, but the Temporary Internet Files from Firefox, Edge and Chrome, take a little more work.
I've added those three Browsers to my Cleanup batch file. I run that batch file daily for a Clean Machine!

It's nice to get this little report at the end of the run, so I know what I'm gaining. This was actually a very typical 24 hr period for me, as I'm usually on the internet all day, and I use both Edge and Firefox. (Not Chrome)
My Cleanup.bat program is available to anyone who asks for it.

TM

Kees · Jan 6, 2024

TechnoMage2021 said:
Which Temp folder are you talking about?

Normally spoken, with mentioning Temp Folder it will be meant these two environment variables:

%TEMP%	$Env:TEMP	%systemdrive%\Windows\Temp
%TMP%	$Env:TMP	%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp

The location of which you can change if desired, one site where it is described (amongst others) is:

Windows Temporary Files - Everything you want to know

What are Temporary Files in Windows 11/10? Why are they created? Where is the folder location? Change location of the Temp folder. How to Empty this folder?

www.thewindowsclub.com

Of course there are other TEMP directories, of which most you can empty without risk. I recently searched my system partition for the word (and folder) 'temp' and found many of those folders. The most of them are empty. Some have some or more content, but I would not risk it to empty them without knowing what I'm throwing away. Besides that: if you just delete files with extension .tmp and .old, you will keep many files in the TEMP folders that have different extensions, but are temp files as well.

The TEMP folder in my system is having a subfolder called fs-capricorn, that is made at system-start by F-secure and has just one file in it with size 170 MByte. Name of the file: AV-malware-names-5048-v3nO2F (numbers change every day). Without extension, so your routine will not delete them at all...

In the TEMP folder are other files, with other extensions, like MTX, PNG, LOG and filenames without extension like LastPing, windowssettings, windowsSettings_1.0-1cc5da2fc505c79016279b(and many more figures following). All those will not be deleted by your routine.

I myself don't see the advantage of that method and will stay on deleting the whole (two) TEMP folders at system shutdown...

ThrashZone · Jan 6, 2024

Hi,
I've not noticed anything edge wise but then again I haven't looked or ever used edge either.

None of this hurts windows updates
@Brink probably has the same individual reg files around here somewhere lol
Just copy and paste in cmd as admin.

Code:

rem Disable Edge Browser preload on startup. We'll never use it anyway, saves memory and startup time
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\MicrosoftEdge\Main /v AllowPrelaunch /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge /v StartupBoostEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge /v BackgroundModeEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

rem Disable Edge Browser (Chromium) first run experience
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge /v HideFirstRunExperience /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

rem Block Edge from recreating the desktop icon on every update
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate /v CreateDesktopShortcutDefault /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate /v RemoveDesktopShortcutDefault /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Source the the strings above and there is some more good stuff there
Personally I use a lot of it lol
But it is best to make a system image before making changes in case you want to undo easily.

Windows 11 Tweaks for GPU Benchmark

Updated for 22H2 Install without Internet When it prompts you to go online, press Shift+F10 and type "OOBE\BYPASSNRO" (that's an o not a zero at the end). After the automatic reboot you can install without network Install on systems without TPM, UEFI or other requirements...

www.techpowerup.com

ThrashZone · Jan 6, 2024

Yeah not much to speak of.

ThrashZone · Jan 6, 2024

Just a follow up on the ccleaner recommend
I'd suggest the portable one it installs nothing just right click the zip folder and properties/ Unblock button and save
Extract all anywhere and use either ccleaner.exe I used the 64 on above
Just uncheck what you want to in temp files... and the browser you do use.
look through the setting to uncheck the sells crap listings to remove and auto updating...
.
CCleaner - Download Builds

The Pool Man · Jan 6, 2024

glasskuter said:
Ccleaner or Glary Utilities has always and still does the job for me.

Yes but with legs like that you may be getting preferential treatment

pseymour · Jan 6, 2024

JohnnyGui said:
I read that temp files that are used within a week won't get deleted but I'm seeing way older files that haven't been changed for months. Furthermore, I don't expect the cleanup option to show temp files that can't be deleted.

Apart from being able to delete the temp files manually, what is the reason I can't do this by simply using the cleanup setting of Windows?

It looks like no one answered the original questions, although alternatives were offered.

The settings for the Temporary Files item in Disk Cleanup are stored in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Temporary Files. If you look there, you see two significant values that affect behavior.

LastAccess, which defaults to a value of 7. This value is the number of days that must have elapsed since a file was last accessed or a directory was created for that file or directory to be considered for cleanup. Cleanup is not based on file creation time or modification time; it is access time.

Flags, which has a value of 65 (hex 41) on my Windows 11 systems. This means that matches are performed against "directories and remove matches and all of their subdirectories" (0x40), and search and remove recursively (0x1). Files marked as read-only, hidden or system will not be removed.

reference: Creating a Disk Cleanup Handler

TM21 · Jan 8, 2024

After reading all the "Yada, Yada, Yada" , I'm so glad that I wrote my own Cleanup.bat program (Batch file).
It goes to specific temp folders (all that I could find) and deletes everything in them with a " *.* " so nothing is left behind.

Just for grins, I just went to a CMD prompt and ran:
Del /F /S /Q C:\*.log
and I got three screens of .log files. Programs may keep log files, but I don't!!!

Then I just ran my Cleanup.bat program, for the first time in 24 hours, and got this report:

Not bad for a little Home Brew cleanup program. And I can add to it anytime I want.

Cheers Mates!
TM

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