How to clean temp files with WinDirStat on Windows?

Davis Bruce
7 min readAug 2, 2022

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When you use your computer to work with files, the operating system creates internal caches so that when you open them again the Operating System finds them slow. This is especially true for small files that are often opened and closed repeatedly.

Software like WinDirStat is an excellent tool to use for cleaning up hard drives and helping you increase your computer’s performance. It helps you find unused files, such as temporary internet files, cache, and cookies.

WinDirStat is a best practice to delete any temp files that are no longer needed. It will help you clean up the PC and boost your computer’s performance.

These temporary files are also known as temp files because they’re stored in a special folder for temporary documents on your computer.

This article covers how to find and delete temp files on Windows. Whether you want to optimize your drive performance or just get rid of unnecessary junk taking up space, this article has a few tips to keep things Clean.

How to clean temp files with WinDirStat on Windows?

What Are Temp Files?

A temp file is a document that’s stored in a special folder on your computer. Temporary files are often created when a computer program is working on a task, and they’ll be deleted once the program is done with them.

Usually, temp files are small text files or image files that contain information that programs need for a task, but don’t need to stay in the file long term. For example, you might use a word processor to create a presentation, but it needs some images from the web to go along with it.

Your computer will download these images and put them in a temp folder while the program processes them. Once the program is done, it’ll move the images to where they’re supposed to go and delete the temp files. In this article, we will show you how to optimize disk usage with WinDirStat.

Find Temp Files with WinDirStat

Windirstat is an easy-to-use program that helps you find and delete temp files on Windows. You can also use it to find and delete old duplicates, defragment your drive, and scan your PC for malware and other potential threats. This tool can be downloaded for free from the developer’s website, and then used on any Windows computer.

You can check your computer’s temp folder to make sure there aren’t any files lingering there that you don’t need. This can help you free up some space on your hard drive and speed up your computer’s performance at the same time.

How to clean temp files with WinDirStat on Windows?

Windirstat is a powerful tool that can be used to quickly find and delete both temporary and permanent files. With some practice, you can use it to separate old and new files, reduce the size of your startup apps, and free up extra disk space on your hard disk drive.

Here are a few tips for using Windirstat to clean up your computer.

1. Find Temp Files: With the program open, select “Find Temp Files” from the menu bar. This will start a scan for temp files on your computer.

2. Delete Temp Files: When the scan is complete, you will see a list of all the temp files that were found, as well as the amount of space they took up. You can then select the files that you want to delete, and click “Delete.”

3. Optimize Disk Usage: After deleting the temp files, click the “Optimize Disk Usage” button to see which folders are using the most space on your hard drive. Then, you can delete any unnecessary folders.

4. Defragment Drive: If you have a lot of temporary files sitting around on your computer, you can also use Windirstat to defragment your drive, which will improve the speed at which data is read from the drive.

Identifying Unnecessary Files and Directories on WinDirStat

Before you can delete unnecessary files on your computer, you need to know what files and directories to look for. If you want to get a general idea of which files you should be keeping and which you can safely delete, there are a few ways to go about it.

Run a Scan — First, you can use a free disk scanning program to find out which files and folders are taking up the most space. You can find many free options online, but two of the most popular are WinDirStat and a program called TreeSize.

When you run a scan, these programs will display a visual representation of your file system, with the biggest files and folders appearing as the largest. Filter by Category — Another way to identify unnecessary files and directories is by filtering your file system by category.

You can do this in Windows by pressing Ctrl + Shift + F to open the “Search” window. Then, click on “More Options” and choose “File Types” from the drop-down menu. You can then type in a specific file type like “HTML” or “jpg” and Windows will display all of the directories and files of that type.

Optimize Disk Usage with WinDirStat

WinDirStat is a simple, lightweight, and free Windows utility that helps you visualize directories on your computer so you can see where files are stored, identify large files or directories, find unnecessary files (such as old backups), and clean up your disk.

If you have used a Mac before, you probably know how useful the built-in ‘finder’ application is. It enables users to explore their file system easily so they can locate files and folders quickly.

The Windows operating system has nothing like it; however, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways of optimizing disk usage on your computer running Windows. In this blog post, we will show you how to optimize disk usage with WinDirStat.

Windirstat can help you optimize disk usage by showing you the amount of space that is being used by each folder on your computer. You can then use this information to delete any unnecessary files and folders to free up more space on your computer’s drive. This feature can also be used to find duplicate files and remove them from your computer.

How to find free space in WinDirStat after deleting the temp file?

The first thing you need to do when you have deleted a bunch of temp files is to check the amount of space that has been freed up on your hard drive. This is especially important if you deleted files that were important to you, as you could lose data if the drive space runs out.

With Windirstat, you can easily find which folders are taking up the most space on your hard drive, and then you can delete any unnecessary files that are taking up space. To do this, all you have to do is right-click any empty part of your drive, select “Properties,” and then you will see the “Free up space” option.

Folder for temporary files

The %temp% folder is the default location for temporary files on Windows. You can find this folder by going to “My Computer” and then clicking “Local Disks” (C:) > “Windows” > “Temp”. You can delete files in this folder at any time, and you should periodically when it gets too full.

Regularly cleaning out these folders can help you avoid having your computer run too slowly due to a lot of unnecessary files taking up space. And if you ever need to find a file that you’ve accidentally stored in the temp folder, it’s easy to search the folder and find it.

Other Strategies for Optimizing Disk Usage

If you’re trying to figure out how to clean up disk space, there are a few things you can do to make your computer run more efficiently. First, make sure you’re regularly backing up your computer (learn how to do it here!).

This is especially important if your computer has a lot of files stored on it. Regularly clean your computer’s cache — Your computer’s cache is a collection of data that are downloaded from the internet and stored on your hard drive for quicker access. Websites and apps will often store images in your computer’s cache if you view them or regularly use them.

You can regularly clean your computer’s cache to delete unnecessary files from your hard drive and regain some disk space. To do this, search “clean cache” in your computer’s search bar. Use large-file analysis to find and delete large files — Another way to optimize disk usage is to find and delete large files on your computer.

There are several ways to do this, but the easiest is with WinDirStat. When you run the program, click on the “Find Large Files” tab. Then, simply drag and drop a folder onto the program’s window to find large files inside it. Finally, click on the “DELETE” button to delete the selected files.

Final Words

After all the research we find that the clearing computer’s cache and temp folder help to speed up the process of opening files, but after a few months of use, these folders can get filled with unnecessary or outdated files. Because these directories are for temporary files only, you can remove them at any time.

And cleaning all that unnecessary files helps windiest because windiest is one the best software cleaning temp from your windows. It has great features and it is absolutely free. Windirstat helps you to speed up your windows system. And it has great responses from the users. Lots of users use windiest on daily basis.

Thank you! I hope this article will help you.

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Davis Bruce

Techy and Dreamer. So My Dream is to serve people across the globe!