Temp files and other junk

I see many shareware programs and other utilities on the site for managing, deleting, cleaning internet and temp files. I am currently running Win 98se, ( YES, it is old but my machine is still very fast) and my good friend who knows nothing about maintaince as XP Home.

Which one is best? I am always afraid of deleting those file that have a password in there and then when I bo back to Amazon etc I will have to regeister etc.

Thank
Gman

 

The files you don't want to delete, if you don't want to have to log in again at sites where you've registered, are called "cookies" and reside in the c:\windows\cookies\ directory. So you can leave those intact.

However, not all cookies are necessary. Some of them are actually spyware and you would want to get rid of those. You can download AdAware ( http://www.lavasoft.de ), check for updates and then run it, and it will remove spyware and adware cookies, while leaving the "real" cookies alone. You can also go into that directory and manually delete whatever cookies you want to, while leaving the "real" ones there (such as Amazon if you want to keep it, etc.). I definitely recommend running AdAware regularly.

For getting rid of temp internet files, you can (in I.E.) click on Tools, Internet Options, Delete Files, select "delete all offline content" and click the OK button. Then go into c:\windows\temporary internet files\ and delete what's in there.

For Temp files, you can run Disk Cleanup (Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup). Or you can manually delete them from c:\windows\temp\.

After all that, you should defrag (Diskeeper is the best in my opinion -- http://www.executive.com ).

Weekly on all of the above is good.

Cheers!,
Hedda Lora

 

I'm also running win98se and I've added a couple of command lines to Autoexec.bat that do the trick at startup: delete temporary and internet temp. files (incl. index file) and history.

For deleting potentially dangerous cookies I mainly use Ad-aware, otherwise I just let them be, since some of them really are useful.

 

I do use Adware all the time and I use the normal remove temp file from my Browser but I still have MB's of Cookies and Temp files that I know can be put in the trash

Gman