Temporary Internet File CheckDo a temporary internet file sweep and your Internet PC will love it. It's more than good 'house-keeping', it's a boost in system performance. Your temporary internet file folder could have hundreds (maybe thousands) of files that are just a waste of system resources. Purpose of temporary internet filesYour computer stores these files in the cache portion of your hard drive in order to avoid delays in having to download everything necessary to display web pages every time you visit a site. Each web page you view in your browser is usually made up of several (individual) files. Each of these files must be downloaded from the Internet each time you click on a link to bring up that particular page. But what if some of these files are already saved in the temporary internet file section of your hard drive since the last time you viewed that particular page? Then, no need to twiddle your thumb and wait for these files to trickle down to your modem - just load them up from the cache. Since many pages from the same site has common elements (such as the logo, and style files), it is usually more efficient to cache these files so that your computer does not have to wait for all these files to download every time you request a page. Temporary Internet File BuildupSince your computer keeps these files (just in case you need them again), you can see that you could be storing lots of unwanted files on your hard drive, after you have finished researching a topic, or playing your favorite online game. It is important then to do some 'house-cleaning' every once in awhile. Prevent the unnecessary internet file buildup. This not only saves storage space, but reduces the time and resources your PC has to use to manage these unwanted files. I have seen many Internet computers get a performance boost by just deleting the temporary internet files. Temporary Internet Files - How to Delete ThemDeleting your temporary internet files does not remove your cookies. I will show you how to get rid of these unwanted files for three popular browsers. In Internet Explorer, follow the following steps:
How Often Should You Delete Your Temporary Internet Files?You should not wait until your computer starts to literally drag under the massive load of these temporary files before you delete them. Do it regularly. How often? Well, how often you do a temporary internet file cleaning depends on how much you surf the internet, how many sites you visit and what is on these website. However, you can check to see how many files are there in your
temporary storage by clicking the Settings button on the Internet
Properties box.
In the Settings dialog, click the View Files button to see the temporary internet files and cookies stored on your hard drive. Scroll through the list to see if there is a large number of files. You can also use the Last modified field in the listing to determine how old the files are. Sometimes I don't want to delete all of my temporary internet files. In this case, I remove only the older files. To do this, just click the Last Modified header of the listing window to sort the files according to date. WARNING: This could be tricky, since the listing will show your cookies as well. You may not want to remove your cookies, so do this ONLY if you are confident of what you are about to do! There are about eight columns in the listing. This means that everything might not fit on your screen, so note whether the older files are at the top or at the bottom of the listing. When you have determined that... Scroll back to the first column using the horizontal scroll bar (if you have to), and select all the files you want to delete. Hit delete to remove the temporary internet files. Netscape Browser users:From the main menu, select Edit -- Preferences. Under Category, open Advanced and then select Cache. This gives you quite similar options to those of Internet Explorer. Choose Clear Memory Cache or Clear Disk Cache to remove the temporary internet file items from memory or from your disk, respectively. Note that you can change the folder and make other settings, as is the case with Internet Explorer. But don't trouble anything if you are not sure of exactly what you are doing. Opera Browser users:To change your temporary internet file storage or to remove the files completely, choose the File menu, and select Preferences.
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Find More Garbage Files Hiding On Your Hard Drive Even when you follow the procedure given on this page to clear your temporary internet file pile, you may still have old temporary files on your system. Here are some other files you can look for and remove. *.TMP files Right click on the My Computer icon on your desk top and choose Search (or Find depending on your version of Windows). Type *.tmp in the search box and press Enter. Your computer searches for all files ending with the tmp extension. When the search is completed, select all (Ctrl+A) in the list and press delete. This could include some temporary folders as well. *.CHK files These are files created by recovery programs like Scandisk or Chkdsk (if it is used). Perform the same search procedure as for *.tmp files given above, and delete these files. *.GID files These files are created by any help document you use, like when you press F1 for a program help. They sometimes (somehow) get left behind on your system, just taking up space. Search for *.GID and delete these files. ~*.* Files All files beginning with the ~ (tilde) are just a waste of your storage space. Some of them may show zero storage space. You should still delete these as they are still a waste of system operation time and resources. Right click My Computer and enter ~*.* and press enter. REMEMBER the tilde! These are general cleanup tasks that you can do that will greatly save system resources and improve the performance of your computer.
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Look
for the Delete Files button in the middle section of the
General tab section. Click the delete Files button to delete only
the temporary Internet files. Depending on the number of files in your
temporary internet file storage, it could take any where from a few
seconds to a few minutes before the process is completed. 