Big files on OS Drive, can I delete them?

mike65

I've got the following on my C:/drive - un98undo.dat
and win386.swp. About 200mbb betwen them.

Can I delete these?

Mike.

secret_squirrel

Just a guess but the first looks like its been left behind after an upgrade from/to win98.

So the answer would be yes if you dont want to back out the upgrade.

The second one looks like a windows swap file to me...so I would say no way José. unless of course its an old swap file left behind from said upgrade.....

SantaHoe

Yeah it really depends on what OS you're running now...
win386.swp is a Win9x swapfile, if you're using 2k/XP your current swapfile would be pagefile.sys and it'd be fine to delete the win386.swp file.

Capt'n Midnight

Which version of windows ?

You can delete pagefile.sys and win386.swp only when they aren't being used - so if you are using it you can't delete them.

Use spacemonger to find other files - uninstall large apps.

If you have a drive you can tell windows to move the the swap file (control panel - system etc.) and internet explorer (tools options - etc.) termporaty internet files to it.

do a clean boot
and delete all the files in c:\temp and c:\windows\temp too.
you can also remove any files c:\file0???.chk left behind by scandisk.

Tivoli

yes

mike65

I'm using win98se

Mike.

sceptre

You can delete the undo file if you're not planning to go back to the previous windows install you had then. There's probably another smaller file with it. The handiest way to dump both of them is by using Add/Remoev Programs (there will probably a listing like revert to old version of windows or something similar). Nothing wrong with just dumping that one manually though.

You can only delete the swap file if you've got enough RAM run windows without a swap file. Windows won't let you delete it while it's using it (like Capn Midnight said). If the swap file isn't disabled it'll just recreate it next time you start windows.

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by sceptre
You can only delete the swap file if you've got enough RAM run windows without a swap file.

Ah memories of win 95 - 4MB ram and a minimum of 8MB swap file

There is a technet article somewhere about renaming the swapfile so both win9x and winnt/2k can share it on dual boot systems.

The golden rule is - if you don't recognise it then leave well enough alone.
But you are probably also safe in doing a search and delete on
*.~*
~*.*
*.tmp

not all *.bak files can be deleted - most can
*.log can possibly go - if you have turned logging on onthe modem they can be large - put in recycle bin first

also do a find on all files larger than 999KB - the oddest stuff can show up, things you've forgotten about.

Spacemonger is the mutt's nuts for this sort of thing so you can target the big files first.

In case you are tempted - don't use drivespace - all this does is put your entire C: drive into a single file - if it gets damaged you've lost everything.

mike65

On the log files I just checked them and today 11 have been created so far.

Mike.