Temporary Internet Files ... Say hello to E-Junk

I guess e-junk would be a great term to call your T.I.F.s or Temporary Internet Files. These files are created every time you surf the Internet. They save a small piece of information on your computer so that when you go and visit the same website again, the page will load a little faster. This would be great if you have a slow connection like dial-up (ewwwwwww), but we're living in the Broadband age of information transfer so to keep these files isn't really necessary.

There are a couple of ways to get rid of these files on your comp. You could delete them manually, but that would take some time and skill. Also that would be incredibly BORING! Luckily, Windows XP comes equipped with a program that will clean up all the unnecessary files on your computer. My only problem with it is that sometimes this program crashes on me and it takes quite a while to finish. Also I don't really know if it does a fantastic job of cleaning up for you. If you don't really care, go ahead and use this program located at:

Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup

When you start the program up, it will check your system to see how many files you really don't need on your computer that are just taking up space. It won't delete your personal files so don't worry about that. Once it shows you how much space you're about to get back, go ahead and tell it to clean up the files and be prepared to wait a little while.

Now if you want something a little better and a lot more colorful, there is a program out there that will do the same thing as Disk Cleaner but SOOOOOO much better. My recommendation to you: CCleaner.

Download CCleaner 

First thing you should know about CCleaner is that IT'S FREE! That's right, free. Even the program updates are free.

The program is incredibly user friendly and pretty much idiot proof. There's really only one button that you should have to push and that's the clean up button. This will find every useless file on your computer and clean it up for you and MUCH FASTER than Disk Cleaner. It will also tell you how much disk space you will get back after you clean up all those files. If you've never cleaned out TIFs before then you will probably get back a good 100mbs. That's great if you're already seeing that you're running out of space.

I wouldn't recommend using the registry cleaner, however. Not that it's bad, but because if you're not really comfortable with computers then you really shouldn't be going anywhere NEAR your computer's registry. Your registry is basically like the instruction manual that only your computer understands. If you mess with its instructions, then it won't know what to do when it has to do something. I don't recommend playing with this section of the program unless you know what you're doing. We'll talk about your registry in the future, but for now, don't really worry about it.

After you've cleaned up all these files that you don't need, you should definitely run your defragmenter program. If you don't know how to do that, check my blog from yesterday. If you take a close look at the bars after you analyze, you will see that you will have a little more white space now that you've deleted files.

That's all for today, folks. Happy Cleaning!