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Thursday, June 22, 2017

Windows 7 Disk Cleanup - What File Categories to Delete - A detailed look

Windows 7 Disk Cleanup has many new file deletion categories, see full list below.


How to Use

Disk Cleanup wizard detects outdated files that can be delete, so if the category appears you can select those files to be deleted. By category, I mean potential files to be deleted under the "Files to delete:" heading in the bordered box below. 

These potential files to be deleted 
will be enumerated each time you run Disk Cleanup, so the categories will change each time you run it and and be different on other computers.


Click "View Files" button to examine the files that are to be deleted in each category.

Click "Clean up system files" button to to analyze the selected drive and display what Windows system can be cleaned up. A progress bar is shown during this process. Wait for this to finish.


When done, Disk Cleanup shows the total amount of space that can be freed up. Then, in the 'Files to delete' section you see different types of files that can be deleted. 

This will include categories such as 
'Downloaded Program Files''Recycle Bin''System error' files, 'Temporary files' and others. For each category of items, you see how much space they occupy at the moment. 




Recommendation:  Select all categories to delete all the files, but review the categories below for further details. 

Extra : Click 'Clean up system files' button (to save allot of gigs of space) - see below.


Detailed Explanation of all 'Files to Delete' Categories:

Category Description
Game News Files The Game News Files facilitate delivery of the RSS feeds to your Game Library.
Game Statistics Files The Game Statistics Files are created to aid maintenance of various game statistics.
Game Update Files The Game Update Files are files created in the course of updating your Game Library Games. They are temporarily stored in a dedicated folder.
Old ChkDsk Files Check Disk (chkdsk) is a command line that you use to recover files from your hard disk, generally caused by surface errors due to aging, bumping and smoke, that cause bad sectors (lost data) to appear. Chkdsk recovers what it can of these sectors in files which was written over the bad sector into files ending in .CHK.
You can open and read the contents using Notepad or even better Notepad++. Often the contents are not worth keeping but they can be. Chkdsk files are indicative that a drive is starting to fail. If new bad sectors continue to appear you should replace the drive or you risk losing all your files.
"FileList"="*.CHK"
"Folder"="?:\\FOUND.000|?:\\
FOUND.001|?:\\FOUND.002|?:\\FOUND.003|?:\\FOUND.004|?:\\FOUND.005| ?:\\FOUND.006|?:\\FOUND.007|?:\\FOUND.008|?:\\FOUND.009"
Content Indexer Cleaner Blank description

The Windows search indexer is constantly running in the background to make file searches as quick as possible.
"Folder"="?:\\Catalog.wci"
Temporary Setup Files These files should no longer be needed. They were originally created by a setup program that is no longer running.
Located in directory C:\\Windows\\msdownld.tmp|?:\\msdownld.tmp
"FileList"="*.tmp"
Download Program Files Downloaded Program Files are ActiveX controls and Java applets downloaded automatically from the Internet with you view certain pages. They are temporarily stored in the Downloaded Program Files folder on your hard disk.
Temporary Internet Files The Temporary Internet Files folder contains webpages stored on your hard disk for quick viewing. Your personalized settings for webpages will be left intact.
Offline Web Pages Offline pages are webpages that are stored on your computer so you can view them without being connected to the Internet. If you delete these pages now, you can still view your favorites offline later by synchronizing then. Your personalized settings for webpages will be left intact.
Debug Dump Files Files created by Windows.
Recycle Bin The Recycle Bin contains files you have deleted from your computer. 
Setup Log Files Files created by Windows.

"FileList"="setup*.log|setup*.
old|setuplog.txt|winnt32.log"
"Folder"="%WINDIR%"
System Error Memory Dump Files Remove system error memory dump files.
System Error Minidump Files Remove system error minidump files.
Temporary Files Programs sometimes stores temporary information in the TEMP folder. Before a program closes, it usually deleted this information. You can safely delete temporary files that have not been modified in over a week.
Temporary Sync Files Remove Windows Media Sync files.
You can use Windows Media Player to copy music, videos, and pictures from your Player Library to a portable device, such as a compatible MP3 player. This process is called syncing. These are temp files in caches create in this process which are delete

 
Thumbnails Windows keeps a copy of all your picture, video, and document thumbnails so they can be displayed quickly when you open a folder. If you delete these thumbnails, they will be automatically recreated as needed.
User File History Windows stores file versions temporarily on this disk before copying them to the designated File History disk. If you delete these files, you will lose some file history.
Per User Archived Windows Error Report Files used for Windows Error Reporting (WER). These are logs of errors (program crashes mostly) that were reported to Microsoft by the Windows Error Reporting service.
Per User Queued Windows Error Report Files used for Windows Error Reporting (WER) and solution checking. 'Queued' just means that it contains error reports that haven't been sent yet for whatever reason, and as such have been stored locally on your hard disk, waiting to be sent.
System Archived Windows Error Report System Archived files used for Windows Error Reporting (WER).These are logs of errors (system crashes) that were reported to Microsoft by the Windows Error Reporting service.
System Queued Windows Error Report System files used for Windows Error Reporting (WER). 'Queued' just means that it contains error reports that haven't been sent yet for whatever reason, and as such have been stored locally on your hard disk, waiting to be sent.

'
Clean up system files' button you see the following dialog box



This will include categories such as'Windows ESD Installation Files''Windows Defender'and others. 

Windows Update Cleanup only appears in the list when the Disk Cleanup wizard detects Windows updates that you don't need on your system.  This category will generally save you the greatest amount of space. All of these are okay to delete, that is the purpose of this wizard. 

Recommendation:  Carefully select categories to delete all the files, but review the categories below for further details, some have irreversible effects.

Detailed Explanation of 'Clean up system files' categories

Category Description
Temporary Windows installation files Installation files used by Windows setup. These files are left over from the installation process and can be safely deleted.
Previous Windows installation(s) Files from a previous Windows installation. Files and folders that may conflict with the installation of Windows have been moved to folders named Windows.old. You can access data from the previous Windows installations in this folder.
Update package Backup Files Windows saves old versions of files that have been updated by an Update package. If you delete the files, you won't be able to uninstall the Update package later.
Windows Update Cleanup Windows keeps copies of all installed updates from Windows Update, even after installing newer versions of updates that are no longer needed and taking up space. (You might need to restart your computer.)
Device driver packages Windows keeps copies of all previously installed device driver packages from Windows Update and other sources even after installing newer versions of drivers. This task will remove older versions of drivers that are no longer needed. The most current version of each driver package will be kept.
Files Discarded by Windows Upgrade Files from a previous Windows installation. As a precaution, Windows upgrade keeps a copy of any files that were not moved to the new version of Windows and were not identified as Windows system files. If you are sure that no user's personal files are missing after the upgrade, you can delete these files.
Windows Upgrade Log Files Windows upgrade log files contain information that can help identify and troubleshoot problems that occur during Windows installation, upgrade, or servicing. Deleting these files can make it difficult to troubleshoot installation issues.
Service Pack Backup Files Windows saves old versions of files that have been updated by a service pack. If you delete the files, you won't be able to uninstall the service pack later.

When you click OK, Disk Cleanup will prompt you to confirm that you want to permanently delete the selected files. 

If you have never done, you'll be surprised at the Gigs of space freed up. 

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