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This is the start of the message and question I received:
Yo Eric, I was at your wesite, really cool, and noticed that you had not been asked any questions yet. Well here's one for ya', I sure hope you can help: a week or so ago, I was at work, and surfing the web while my "in box" got deeper and deeper. While on the web I visited sites regarding cars, colleges, careers, and of course, girls. Then a day or so ago, my boss asked me to download the new version of Quickbooks Pro off the Internet. I did this but was "unable to apply the patch program due to insufficient disk space." Confused as I was, I recruited my boss to help. He went into Windows Explorer and deleted all the 'temp' and 'temporary internet files'. I asked him what that stuff was, he explained that all the places I had been on the web were archived on the hard drive. Well, as I said, we deleted all these files, so whats the problem, I'll tell ya'. Today I was searching my hard drive for a file I knew was there,but couldn't find. Durring this search, I opened 'Word', selected the open file icon, and then opened 'windows'. Here, I noticed this 'temporary internet files' again, when I opened it, there was a very obscene photo there. I don't think it was a photo I had viewed earlier in the week, but non-the-less, there it was. I tried to delete these files, but was unable too. When in 'windows explorer' I can open the 'temporary internet files' and it is empty, yet these photos are still there. I'm confused because;
-Why do they appear as a 'word' file if they are photos?
-why can't I delete these files?
-If I didn't download any photos (which I didn't) then where did these photos come from?
Before I was hired, there were some "devious" people working in the building, I suppose it is possible that these photos are from "many moons ago" but I would like to be sure of that before I go and ask our technician to remove them.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!! Sincerely, your slightly troubled friend
Okay, without asking you I can tell that you use Microsoft Internet Explorer as your web browser. It is true that all images, webpages, cgi scripts, etc. that you run across on the internet is saved on your harddrive and it is referred to as "cache". It does this so that when you visit that site again, it loads faster because the images, webpages, and cgi scripts are already on your harddrive and it is much faster to load webpages from a harddrive than it is the actual internet.
I can probably pinpoint the exact version of your web browser by the directory that your "cache" is stored in. You are probably using Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher. All versions up to 4.0 keep their cache in directories called "Cache1", "Cache2", "Cache3", and "Cache4". 4.0 started a new wave (as does many of Microsoft's products) and they started putting it in a directory called "Temporary Internet Files" under your "Windows" directory.
Microsoft Word is very tightly integrated with Windows 95, 98. When you go to the open new file icon, and it brings the dialog box up to select the file that you want to open, there are tiny icons next to each filename. Those icons represent the program that each file is associated with. For instance, when I open a file with Word, .gif files have the Paint Shop Pro 5 icon next to it, I click on that file, and it brings up "gibberish" because it does not open Paint Shop Pro to view that image. I would guess that you have a program like Microsoft Picture it, or Microsoft Image Composer, which it will open and allow you to view the image. That is just like opening an Excel spreadsheet in Word, it will go ahead and open it, and know how to read it, because the two are compatible. Whereas my files are associated with Paint Shop Pro and Word will not open another vendors program on top of it's own.
To find out why you can't delete these temporary files, we need to check and see if these files have a "Read-Only" attribute set. To do that we need to know where those files are, and you say that when you go to the "Temporary Internet Files" directory, nothing is there. Okay, open a file that you want to delete in Word, as you did before. Write down the filename. Go into Windows Explorer and go to "Tools, Find, Files or Folders..." and type that filename into the blank provided and set the "Look In" directory to "Local Hard Drive(s)" and press the "Include Subfolders" checkbox. Press the "Find" button. It should find that file and you can right click on that filename and go to "Properties". There you will see a section near the bottom that says "Attributes" make sure that the "Read-Only" attribute does NOT have a checkbox in it. If it does take it out and press the "Ok" button. If it doesn't leave it out and press the "Cancel" button. You should now be able to right click on the file like you did before, but this time pick "Delete" it will ask you if you are sure, and answer yes. Then you should Empty your Recycle Bin. To get rid of it for good.
Now remember EVERY file that you look at on the internet is "downloaded" to your harddrive. Therefore, it has to store it somewhere, and if someone wants to find out your exact addresses that you've visited on the internet, they can.
If you are positive that you haven't visited sites that contain the pictures that are on your harddrive, they may be left over from another person using that computer previous to you, or someone using your computer when you don't know it.
Another good tip to save harddrive space is to periodically search your harddrive for files that end in ".tmp" or files that start with "~". The way I do this is to go to Find like we did before in Explorer, and search all of your harddrives for "*.tmp" and "~*.*" if I find any files that match these searches, I delete them. The internet is not the only place that uses temporary files. Sometimes when you install something, it will create temporary files but fail to delete them after the installation is over. There have been many times that I have run across 150-200 MB of temporary files that someone has created by failing to turn their computer off properly, turning the computer off in the middle of an installation, or some other strange happening.
Well, I know this was long and I hope it answered your question, if not let me know and we'll try some other things.
If anyone has a question for me, email me and I will answer it the best I can!