More Computer questions...

I know someone here knows!

I am nearly 30% on the way to my new desktop. In the meantime, I'm ruthlessly cleaning up my existing hard drive. Under Windows/Temporary Internet Files/Content.IE5 there are 8 sub directories with well over 800MB of stuff.

I probably should have been looking at this years ago!

But the question is, what is safe to delete? Will deleting any of it mess up the registry? Will it mess up my cookies (such as getting to CPF via one click?)

Man, if I could get back almost 800 MB... I would have a faster 'puter for sure!

You can clean out those temporary internet files (cache) with no problem. Beware of cleaning out cookies, without looking at each one (and knowing what your doing).

What I did was make 8 drives (partitions) for win98se. Of these, one is dedicated to temporary internet files and cache (IE and mozilla, respectively), and one is a dedicated swap file of 1 gig fixed size.

I try to keep most of my data and other stuff on the other drives, and one is for my archives, including critical files.

I have 3 x 60 GB ata100 hdds, and 2 are dedicated to win98se, while the other is exclusively linux.

This way, if my win98se install gets hosed, I don't lose much.

No, it won't affect your registry. There is a program to work with the registry called regedit and it is part of windows: click on run, then type regedit and click on ok.

Delete it! It'll probably wipe your cookies but then you just have to log into CPF again and you're good to go.

If you really don't want your cookies deleted go into each folder, sort, and then delete everything BUT your cookies.


Try www.pcpitstop.com

The easy way, and something that should be done periodically anyway, is to do it from within Internet Explorer. Under the menu option "Tools" find "Options" and click on it. You'll see a button that lets you delete your files in your Temporary Internet folder. Unless you have an older version you can even tick the option that says delete offline content. Do it. It's totally harmless.

This method leaves your cookies intact. If you wanted to delete your cookies, there is a button for that there too, unless you're using an older version of IE.

Edit: One other thing; when you click on "OK", and the deletions start, since you have 800meg to delete, it's going to look like your computer is locked up. It's not locked up, it's just got a lot of deleting to do.