Can I delete the prefetch and %temp% content

Hi, I have a problem with a slow PC, so I searched the internet for a solution, I found that some people delete the content of the ( prefetch and %temp% ) folders and I want to know is it safe enough to delete the content


Thanks.

Yes, you can delete from temp. But there's no point to it ... unless your drive is filling up with jigabytes of temp junk (unlikely).

Yes, you can delete from prefetch. But that won't speed things up. It will slow things down (just a bit ... and the system will soon recover from it). So there's no point to it either.

Urban legends.

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Over the years there has been a huge amount of misinformation on the Internet concerning Prefetch. In the early years of XP there were many articles recommending occasional deleting of the prefetch folder contents in order to solver one of it's perceived problems. But it was all based on a serious misunderstanding of how Prefetch worked and the problems never real. Deleting the folder contents will temporarily cripple Prefetch, and Superfetch as well in Vista and later. In more recent years the situation has got much better but there are still some recent misinformed articles.

There has also been a lot of misinformation regarding temp files, the most ridiculous being that Windows would load the contents of the folder into memory at bootup. I have no idea where that idea originated but it is complete nonsense. Deleting temp files is done to conserve disk space, although usually not much. But to improve performance you need to look elsewhere.

Try the approach mentioned in Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup. Leave your anti-virus and other security software checked though.

margrave said:

Yes, you can delete from temp. But there's no point to it ... unless your drive is filling up with jigabytes of temp junk (unlikely).

Yes, you can delete from prefetch. But that won't speed things up. It will slow things down (just a bit ... and the system will soon recover from it). So there's no point to it either.

Urban legends.

Thanks for your advice :)

philtec said:

Try CCleaner Piriform - Download CCleaner - Millions of users worldwide! works for me for many years.

Yes, I try it and it's working great

Thanks.

LMiller7 said:

Over the years there has been a huge amount of misinformation on the Internet concerning Prefetch. In the early years of XP there were many articles recommending occasional deleting of the prefetch folder contents in order to solver one of it's perceived problems. But it was all based on a serious misunderstanding of how Prefetch worked and the problems never real. Deleting the folder contents will temporarily cripple Prefetch, and Superfetch as well in Vista and later. In more recent years the situation has got much better but there are still some recent misinformed articles.

There has also been a lot of misinformation regarding temp files, the most ridiculous being that Windows would load the contents of the folder into memory at bootup. I have no idea where that idea originated but it is complete nonsense. Deleting temp files is done to conserve disk space, although usually not much. But to improve performance you need to look elsewhere.

Thank you so much.

GokAy said:

Try the approach mentioned in Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup. Leave your anti-virus and other security software checked though.

Yes, I have made it before. But thanks very much for your advice

You haven't provided any System Specs - System Info - See Your System Specs

Judging from x86 OS, you possibly have somewhat a low amount of RAM. Getting more RAM would help, also an SSD upgrade gives the most benefit these days.