Windows temp folder

[inca]

I hope someone here can help me?

I offered to take a look at my mates PC to see if I can fix it. He is running win98se with a Pentium 3 - 450 processor and 512 mb ram.

The problem is that it kept crashing and then would have trouble trying to boot it up again.

I have spent the last 8hrs giving it a good sort out, he had no firewall or virus protection. His start up list consisted of 30 plus entries, just under half of those were spyware, dialers and other nasties.

I have installed a firewall (zonealarm) a free anti virus package from Avast, Ad-aware & Spybot which found another hatful of entries in the registry.

My one remaining problem is the Windows temp folder it contains and I kid you not 52.000 files.
I have tried to do a select all and delete in both normal Windows and safe mode but each time explorer crashes meaning I have to reboot pc.

Looking at the web I came across one solution which is to add the following line to the autoexec.bat. †œDELTREE /y c:\windows\temp\*.* > NUL†�

I have rebooted the pc, and so it has taken 5hrs and counting to complete itâ₠¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s boot sequence, I know it's doing something as the hard drive is still grinding away beside me.

I going about it the right way or is there a quicker way of doing this?

Thanks for your time.

[Sipowicz]

Hi and welcome to the site. There are plenty of helpful people on here that will try their best to get you sorted, unfortunately, I am lost on this one.

[Paul K]

del c:\windows\temp
deltree /y c:\windows\temp\*.*
are two that come to mind

Open a command prompt (dos box)
Navigate to the folder using cd c:\windows\temp
Delete all the files using DEL *.*

[philip.j.fry]

The command is certainly right, however it's the fact that it's taking so long to delete the files that is worrying me. It actually sounds like there may be some bad sectors on the hard disk at the location of the temp folder. If it doesn't boot soon, I'd reccommend getting a win98 boot disk from somewhere and booting off of that and then running scandisk in full mode to check the disk.

[danielf]

Just my 2p, but I presume this disk is highly fragmented as well. Could that (partly) cause it taking so long to delete the files?

It shouldn't take five hours - I just deleted 15,000 files on my pc in less than 30 seconds.

[Paul K]

That length of time would seem to point to damage on the disk, is it SMART enabled or does the manufacturer do any diagnostic software for it at all?

[Defiant]

Yep if they have let it get that bad then I'd bet they dont even know what defrag and scandisk are

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Pem

It shouldn't take five hours - I just deleted 15,000 files on my pc in less than 30 seconds.

Did someone knock on the door?

Just kidding

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by Defiant

Yep if they have let it get that bad then I'd bet they dont even know what defrag and scandisk are

More than likely heard of Kazaa though

[Defiant]

Originally Posted by Paul

More than likely heard of Kazaa though

Yea which is why I only ever used Kazaalite plus a good antivirus package

[~Dan~]

Reboot to msdos mode [Don't just open a dos window, it's not the same - windows keeps a 2nd hidden copy of the cache that's only properly deleted from dos.]

C:\WINDOWS\SMARTDRV
[that'll speed things up]

DELTREE/Y C:/WINDOWS/TEMP
DELTREE/Y C:/WINDOWS/HISTORY
DELTREE/Y C:/WINDOWS/TEMPOR~1

if you don't mind losing all your messageboard logins and having to log into them all again you can also do
DELTREE/Y C:/WINDOWS/COOKIES

----

I'll just add that with my pc I found it impossible to get the darn thing out of msdos mode! The solution is to make a backup of your autoexec.bat before you restart in dos mode (luckily I'd made a backup) and copy the backup back onto your autoexec.bat, then reboot, and during the reboot procedure it gives the option to restart in normal mode. Maybe my pc is just weird or maybe there's a simple command or keypress to restart in normal mode?

[aliferste]

I would just wipe the thing and start again from scratch.

[Defiant]

Originally Posted by aliferste

I would just wipe the thing and start again from scratch.

A long way around the problem but well worth it yes.

You should leave them with some general tips on pc house keeping too though. Sounds like they really need it. Every pc I've formated and reimaged has had the owners informed on how to look after it. I dont like seeing my work go to waste