Hello, I need some help to clean up junk/temp files from my computer.
I have used CCleaner for years and it always cleans up the temp files on my hard drive, however, in this case, it is not working.
My computer contains approx. 5.75gb of junk files that I believe abide in C:\User\Adddata\Local\Temporary.
I have run CCleaner over and over and over, I have run Disk Cleaner over and over and over again, but I cannot seem to touch the junk files. I have run a registry cleaner, Disk Defragenter (this is what shows me that I have about 40k files that continuously need to be defragmented, no matter how often I run the defragger), And after I run the defragmenter, it tells me time and again that I have 5+gb of junk files.
I am at my wits end, I have run many scans also using Malwarebytes, Search & Destroy and AVG. They come back either clean or if they show any unwanted files I clean them immediately. So I do not believe my problem is a virus.
So here I am, back at the beginning....HELP!!!
Why can I not clean up these temp files? I know they are all or mostly all in the above mentioned Temp area because it shows me where the files are that the defragger is trying to defrag.
Any help will be appreciated and feel free to ask any questions. Personally I do not understand why CCleaner cannot touch these files.
Are you using Win 7 or Win 8 ?
When you say you used disk cleanup, did you also delete your old restore points?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/336-system-protection-restore-points-delete.html
Can you see the files in C:\User\Appdata\Local\Temporary ? (see link to show these)
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/show-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-vista/
Thank you for the help. I was able to find the C:\User\<name>\Appdata\Local\Temp folder and sure enough there were all the folders I see during the defragmentation. My question is now: because they are in a temp folder can they be deleted?
Also, all of the folders in the Temp directory were dated either 12/30/14 or 12/31/14. So they were put there very recently...there must be a program that is putting all of this temp data there on a daily basis. So if I delete them, will they just come back as soon as a program runs?
If that is the case, do you know what program or programs may be putting this massive amount of temp data into my computer?
Oh, I tried to delete all the files in the Temp directory but the Powershell program crashed and closed instead. I am not by any stretch a computer geek, but it gave me the impression that maybe I shouldn't be deleting the temp folders. Any comment?
Also, I did not do the system restore from disk cleanup as you showed me. This is my wife's computer and I do not want to mess it up or lose any of her data.
Thank you for the help and I hope that you will respond to my post and let me know what I can or cannot do with regards to this problem. Until then I reset the Hidden Files back to Hidden.
Thank you and Happy New Year!!!
P.S. I do not know if this is related or not but the Powershell Program does crash and close quite often now which is a new thing. Also, the operating system is Windows 7.
If it were me I would just delete the files manually via right-click and then select delete. Is that what you tried to delete them?
Next you need to try and find out what is causing them.
Open taskmanager and making sure you select 'show processes from all users' at the bottom have look and see if you can see anything unusual.
What av do you have on there?
What programs do you have running at startup? (Open CCleaner---tools--startup) Anything that is odd or doesn't need to be running?
I asked my wife to only use one of the two programs we are looking after 12AM to see if the folders would register the new date of 1/1/15.
As expected many of the folders now showed a 1/1/2015 date meaning that whatever is adding all of these files to the temp folder area is being created daily. It also appears that a majority of the folders show Content IE.5...which tells me that Internet explorer is the beast adding the files to the temp folders. But here is a problem...I ran CCleaner and lo and behold is showed that it got rid of 117k temp files, however, when I did a disk defrag right after running CCleaner, it still showed 35k files in various temp folders, most in the Content IE.5 section of the folder. How can that be? I then went back to the area in the Users\etc,,, folder area and there they still were. CCleaner did not touch them at all...or it did not remove all of them. But as I said, I ran my defragger right after CCleaner and there were the usual 35k temp files that showed they were fragmented,,,putting my HD at 6% fragmented which is way too high.
I am so frustrated. All the files now are showing 12/31/2014 or 1/1/2015...so they are being accessed daily. Can IE be adding all of these junk files into my temporary folders? It does say Temporary Internet Files\ then ending in Content IE.5.
I never trusted IE or liked it. As I said I am running Win 7 and IE 11.
In CCleaner - options- advanced, make sure the tickbox for 'only delete files in windows temp folder older than 24 hours' is UNTICKED.
Reboot and run ccleaner again ...any difference?
That seemed to work. Thank you for all the help.