Temporary files can take up a lot of hard disk space. What to do with them? Can I delete them or are they needed for stable operation?
Temporary files cause a lot of questions from users. People who are not very computer savvy often don't know if Windows temporary files can be deleted.
What are temporary files?
Most programs on your computer work not only with those files that appeared after installation, but also create new, temporary files. An analogy can be drawn with random access memory. Programs use it to quickly access the necessary data, while not loading the main memory (hard disk or ssd) with work.
Every temporary file created by the program is needed for about the same. To have quick access to some data, temporary files are created. Programs and applications write and read information from them that is relevant for a specific session of work, after which they must delete these files after themselves.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Sometimes an unscrupulous developer decides to save time, and his program does not delete temporary files, and sometimes failures and errors occur, leading to the same result.
Can I delete temporary files?
It is not only possible to delete them, but also necessary! Your system can accumulate an impressive number of such files. Sometimes they take up half of all memory, which can interfere with work and slow down the interaction with the hard drive.
Since these files were needed by the programs only temporarily, now they are of no value. You can safely delete them without fear of losing your data. These files only contain data for programs. Most likely, you will not even understand what kind of information they contain.
To avoid problems with insufficient space on your hard disk and slow down your computer, periodically clean the disk of temporary files. Usually they all lie in specially designated places, so you can delete them programmatically. CCleaner, NeoCleaner, RedOrganizer and many similar utilities can cope with this task.
It's best not to try to manually delete temporary files, as you might catch on to something important.
How to delete Windows temporary files without third-party software?
If you do not want to download third-party cleaning programs, you can use the system functions.
Сleanmgr is a command that will invoke the Disk Cleanup application. Choose to delete all temporary files except installers and uninstallers. By deleting them, you can harm the programs.
Another important point to consider when working with this system function is not to enable compression of old files. This feature can cause your computer to run very slowly.
