Deleting Unnecessary Files

Often programs make changes to your AUTOEXEC or CONFIG files, and save the older version under filenames such as AUTOEXEC.OLD or CONFIG.BAK.

If you know you don't need these older files, consider deleting them. Don't delete AUTOEXEC.DOS or a CONFIG file ending in .DOS, .COM, or .EXE. If you have a plethora of AUTOEXEC and CONFIG files on your system, find out which one is the newest and move the others into a temporary folder you create just for this purpose. Leave them for a few weeks to see if your computer functions properly without them. If it does, delete 'em.

Other files ending in .BAK, .TMP, .~MP, .PRV, .---, .001, .002 (etc), .LOG, .OLD, .*$, .$$$, .??, .??~, .^*, .SYD, .MP, etc. are often unneeded duplicates of other files (be particularly careful with the .PRV, .BAK, and .OLD files). Verify that they are unneeded (if they're over a month old, you most likely don't need them) and delete them. Use the Find Files function to locate these files: enter something like *.BAK to search these files out. You can always delete files ending with .GID or .FTS as these files are created every time you use Help and the Help Search function (.GID files are always hidden; you'll need to activate the "Show all files" option in Explorer to find these babies). .CNT are related files that provide you with tables of contents for certain Help files. If you don't want them, get rid of the .CNT files on your machine. If you find the file WIN32S in \WINDOWS\SYSTEM, it's a leftover from when you upgraded from Win 3.x; you can safely delete it, just make sure you edit your SYSTEM.INI file to remove any references to it. Two other folders that can safely be deleted are MSCREATE.DIR and ~MSSETUP.T. If you back up the Registry a lot, you can safely lose the SYSTEM.1ST file. (When in doubt, leave the file alone.) And check to see if you have a folder in Program Files called Online Services. If you do, delete it. It's filled with old versions of AOL, CompuServe, and possibly Prodigy and MSN. Should you wish to sign up with any of these ISPs, contact them for current software, don't waste your time with what's in that folder. Check out your .TXT files; Windows tends to accumulate lots of garbage under that name, so if it isn't one of your documents, consider losing it. If you use MSWord, look for .WBK files; these are backups for Word documents that you may not need. Word also creates ~$*.DOC files when a document isn't saved properly; if all your documents are OK, lose these files. To be on the safe side with any deletion, create a special folder and move all potential deletes into that folder. Keep them there for a week or a month while you work with your PC. If you can start and restart your machine OK, and all your apps function properly, lose those files. Another kind of file that can usually be trashed are the .DIZ files, usually named FILE_ID.DIZ. This is a Description in Zip file, which just list the files in their particular ZIP archive. Once you unzip an archive, the accompanying DIZ files can be trashed. .GRP files are Program Manager Groups that, if no longer used, can be trashed. And don't keep unwatched .AVI or .WMV movie files around -- they suck up a tremendous amount of space.

What exactly are some of these files? .TMP and. ~MP files are obviously temporary in nature, while .BAK files are backups for particular files (not entire disks). .GID files are Generated Index files created by Win Help, and .SYD files are backup files created by SYSEDIT.EXE (and can be safely deleted if you're sure you don't need them). Go to EXT Search at kresch.com/exts/ext.htm to find out what any file extension means (Win ME users, the System Editor, or SYSEDIT, has been replaced by the System Configuration Utility, launched with the MSCONFIG command).