Deleting temporary files - How to delete temporary files from your computer

Before you follow this tutorial you must read the terms of our disclaimer.

Welcome to our guide to deleting temporary files.

Deleting the temporary files from your computer can help keep it running smoothly as well as speeding your computer up.

Temporary files are created on your PC for numerous reasons, including when you browse the internet, install programs, and by the operating system itself during normal use.

In this tutorial we show you how to use the Disk Cleanup utility that comes as part of the Windows 98/Millennium and XP/2000 versions of the Windows operating system to remove the files.

Delete temporary files with the Disk Cleanup Utility

To open the Disk Cleanup utility:

click on the START
then either PROGRAMS (WIN 98/2000/Millennium) or ALL PROGRAMS (WINDOWS XP)
then hover over ACCESSORIES, SYSTEM TOOLS and then click on DISK CLEANUP

(NON-XP users may be prompted to select the drive that you wish to cleanup. In most cases it will be the C: drive that you need to select)

You will then see the following dialogue box appear:

cleanup calculate

Once the utility has finished analyzing your hard drive the following screen will appear:

cleanup select

Tick the boxes of all the different types of temporary files that you would like to cleanup. In most cases you would tick all of the boxes, you can view the associated files by clicking the VIEW FILES button..

When you have finished with your selections, click the OK button.

You will then see a dialogue box similar to that shown below:

cleanup complete

Once the dialogue box has closed your temporary files have been removed.