Windows 10: Over 50GB of Temp Files in AppData Subfolder

I have over 50 GB of folders and files in the following directory: C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Local\Temp

Can those files be removed? I was wondering where all my space was going... prior to upgrading to Windows 10, I had 135-140GB free out of 240GB, when I upgraded to Windows 10, I had 114GB free, now I'm down to 104GB and then I see almost 50GB of stuff in this one folder...

I assume it's all temporary files... some files dated today. Can this folder be cleaned out?

:)

 

Why so many copies of DismHost.exe running

Indeed. As well as filling up my hard disk with over 100,000 files in \Users\myname\appdata\local\temp.

 

Social Hub

@ clichtenberg

The temp folder is at C:\Benutzer\[yourname]\AppData\Local\Temp. One of the subfolders there probably has the .msi in it. If not, uninstall Social Hub and let the Booklet Software Updater redownload it. Then the .msi shoud be there. If you have Social Hub already
installed, it might be enough to just uninstall The Software updater.

 

The first thing I suspect most will advise is running the DiskCleanup tool. You will find that in Start>Apps>Windows Administrative> and it will prompt you to check system files as well as personal history which woult tend to include now useless temp folders that have acumilated over time not just from 10 but the previous version.

For manual removal that can be touch and go at times depending if some program installer still has access to any. Sometimes the 3rd party apps will tend to leave temp install folders behind as well. The DiskCleanup tool rather then CCleaner for example is the best move at this time to avoid risk of dumping the wrong temp folders?

Presently here with one 10 installation on a second test build taking away the 10.2gb for the $Windows~WS folder and another 19.6gb for a main local storage folder used for keeping updates and small apps, utilities, driver sets, etc. as well as wallpapers and wav files copied into the Windows\media folder the clean install of the 64bit 10 Pro edition comes out to being about 85gb take or give a few gigs! You can clean up some drive right away using the tool.

For the 32bit flavor of 10 Home however you shouldn't be even close to 85gb if you had just seen a clean install. But this is still the initial upgrade I assume where now you have Windows 10 files being added onto the drive as well as what else you previously were seeing bringing up the total.

Typically all those other things you may have put on the drive yourself being stored in local folders you created that can run 7, 10, 15, 20gb at times depending on what files you keep on the drive will bring the total up. The fast and easy way to clear off a lot of "Dead Wood"? Backup what you want to keep as far as personal files and nuke the drive entirely to set up a nice clean install of 10 now that the upgrade has been activated which will mean reinstalling things all over again but without the clutter!

 

Might it be that in the past you have restarted your PC often without the proper procedure?
If for example you switch off the power, tmp files will remain on the hard drive.
Can you look at the dates of the tmp files?
If these are old, it might be caused by wrong procedures.

If in doubt, don't delete, but just cut and paste to an external drive (make sure to have a recovery disk and a full backup before)
Never delete any file that is of the present date
Make sure to restart once before trying to move the files to an external drive, in this way there are no temp files still open of previous days.

generally speaking, with this amount of TMP data, there is something wrong.
We all know Windows " grows" over time, but not this much.

Good luck

 

Disk Cleanup didn't work, even running as Admin, it gets the temp folder in Windows, but not in AppData. I've long since got rid of the $Windows~WS folder along with the Windows.old folder.

Well, during the summer, we have storms and the power goes out more times than not. xD

I ran CCleaner and it got rid of a lot of the stuff in the folder. *Smile I'm now up to 149GB of free space. *Biggrin Got about 73.8 GB used up, but that's with Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop CC 2015, along with Boujou, Office 2013 and a few other programs.

 

Well I could only suggest running the cleanup toolfirst before running with CCleaner which is often pointed at. That would be run from the administrator's account to begin with since any MS created temp folders might run into permissions issues with the 3rd party app. But then I might simply go in manually with the Take Ownership option seen in the right click menu to be able to untick the read only box which can stop people from deleting a particular folder.

And of course that's another item when seeing some larger softwares added on as to how space they will use when totaling the free space leftover afterwards. The WS folder will be going anyways while the nearly 20gb in one local folder full of sub folders for various catagories will grow over time mostly from new downloads being looked over as well as place to keep things like bookmarks and other commonly used files apart from being under the user account folders which get packed away or lost if Windows needs to be reinstalled at some point.

And this is why many will invest in either a separate storage drive or external drive to help previent the main OS drive from getting cluttered up like you were seeing there. Now go back and look in there a few months from now and see how many new temp folders you end up seeing. At times I used to open up one folder while looking around for a file and suddenly run into some 30 or so temp sub folders I ended up needing to nuke off of the drive before CCleaner came along which I still never use. *Smile

 

Yea, the cleanup tool didn't even list that AppData temp folder.

CCleaner found it and cleaned it. *Smile Still has 8GB of stuff in there, but it's down from the 51 GB it had. xD

 

The Cleanup tool generally will not touch the AppData or any of the other regular folders like in Program Files, Program Files(x86), users, Perflogs, etc. while CCleaner goes through everything which isn't always the best thing since it can see things you want to keep removed under the assumption of temp disposable files and folders simply from not being program attached but loose files.

This is why I prefer to manually seek out what isn't wanted and tossing it as I go along since I have heard some complaints about how CCleaner nuked the wrong files at times? on different occasions. Otherwise it would seem to always be getting a good rep except for those times when you wish you had certain files and folders backed up elsewhere?

 

I unchecked everything in CCleaner I didn't want it to analyze, such as Chrome's cookies, etc. but as far Windows temp files, it had at it and so far, nothing seems to be wrong. *Smile

 

Well generally you shouldn't see much of any problem when going to use it. But it is a good idea to watch just what you check off especially if you find you need to look back on a web search and where the temp record would reappear the history is automatically wiped by the app. But in any case those types of files are only KBs in size and generally wouldn't be taking much of any space compared to a decade or so ago when drive capacities were a bit limited and until Sata I+II came didn't much over 250-320gb which then was considered a large drive.

At the moment I still have to clean a few things up here since out of he 931gb total some 475gb is taken up and 141gb is the first Windows.old folder seen on the drive created by the initial upgrade I renamed to Windows.Backup before performing the second Upgrade to Repair the first! The second upgrade over the upgrade was cleaned up already while that seemed a bit too much space taken too soon when considering the second Windows.old was already nuked along with the BT and WS folder immediately found after the 10 install. Good thing I just got done adding in a new 2tb storage drive for sure! *Roflmao2

 

Just to clarify, Appdata isn't a temp folder, it holds important settings for your software.

 

No need! Subtract 113 for the source mods in the Steam Apps sub folder in the Program files(x86) directory from the 141 and you don't have too much left to clean up! *Biggrin I simply moved that over to a separate Steam folder and will nuke the rest while leaving the rename main folder intact for scheduled backups while storing complete system images elsewhere. That will be mostly the destination for backing up user account files.

Well now there's nothing in the Windows.Backup folder and you only find the Appdata under the user accounts where your Local, Local Low, and Roaming folders are tucked away. For browsers other then IE Not Edge which uses IE bookmarks only but others like Firefox, Opera, and so forth those bookmarks are found in the program folder, user profile and bookmarks sub folder when making any backup or importing them from somewhere else. Only if you saw the Apps folder being tossed that wasn't created by the 10 installer but the previous version you upgraded from. 10 no longer has that to find.

Meanwhile I am now sitting at 350gb used from the 475gb earlier when cleaning the Windows.old renamed to Windows.Backup and can scheduled backups to that one.

 

I know, but inside the AppData/Local folder, there is a "Temp" folder.

 

The %appdata% folder also stores iPhone/iPad backups created in iTunes which can take up lots of GB as my %appdata% folder is over 40gb.