Windows ME Temporary Files and AV Scan

by johnlo | February 13, 2005 4:48 AM PST

I'm running ME and NAV 2005. When I try to do a comprehensive scan NAV somehow finds about 100,000 temporary files that I can't locate on my system. This results in the scan process taking about an hour and a half plus I don't want any temporary files maintained anyway.

I am diligent about deleting temporary files and befuddled by where these may be hiding. Any ideas on how to address this problem.

TIA, again

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I was befuddled too, but here's what I found...

by R. Proffitt Forum moderator | February 13, 2005 5:06 AM PST

Years ago I reported this bug that never was fixed from what I can tell.

Read -> http://www.bugnet.com/alerts/bugalert_010110.html

These temp files can be manually deleted.

Bob

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befuddled

by caktus | February 13, 2005 8:56 AM PST

Norton System Doctor also chews-up System Resources. I found that with a little regular maintenence the Nort Doc seemed pretty useless.

Think some of these temp's may be related to .dat files? They do pile-up after awhile.

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Temporary Files

by johnlo | February 13, 2005 11:51 AM PST

I just did a search in "My Computer" for Temporary Files and found "C:\windows\temporary files" containing over 157000 files. This is a shocker. On the way I more or less accidentally deleted all my existing cookies also.

So, given where I am and the extremely dangerous amount of new knowledge I have, what should be my next move????

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More Info

by johnlo | February 13, 2005 1:56 PM PST

If it helps, my search cycle went from "My Computer" to "Local Disk C", to "Windows" to "TEMP", to "Temporary Internet Files", to "Content IE5". That's where these 150,000 + files lie. I opened one of them to see what it is and it's an old picture that I believe I got via email a couple years ago.

My machine, a Gateway, is now running I.E. Version 6.0. I believe I downloaded a MSFT update or upgrade from IE5 to IE6 shortly after buying it.

I'm wondering, but fearful of attempting it, if I could just delete the contents of this "Content IE5" folder. It appears to be the source of, at least, my scanning problem. And. it's got to be eating up a whole bundle of disk space, (865MB), according to it's properties.

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While in the "Windows" folder...

by caktus | February 14, 2005 8:47 AM PST

It is safe to delete the files in these sub-folders:
Cookies, History, Recent History (if it exists),Temp, and Temporary Internet Files. Then on the desktop delete items in the Recycle bin. It's a good idea to clean-out these folders occasionally to restore disc space and to help keep the computer from slowing-down.

The folder regarding IE5 I would leave alone. I removed something like it awhile back and my IE6.0 stopped working. I think mabe the IE6.0 may have been dependant on it (but not sure) because I had to download and install it to get IE6.0 to work again.

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Thanks to all

by johnlo | February 14, 2005 10:57 AM PST

Thanks for helping me wade through this. I hate to admit how stupid I am, but, here goes. I've owned and operated PC's using a couple versions of MSFT Windows for about 7 or 8 years. I've been paranoid about keeping my system clean and free and, for an amateur, thought I knew what I was doing.

However, since obtaining this machine in July of 2001,every time I deleted my temporary internet files I neglected to also " delete all offline content". So, after three and a half years I had collected over 157,000 temporary files in my "C" drive Temporary Files folder.

They're gone now.

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