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Can I clear the C:\Windows\Temp folder & Can I turn off OfficeClickToRun.exe?

Anonymous
2022-04-25T15:48:40+00:00

I am new to here so I don't exactly know if I do write everything correctly. I have a Temp folder in C:\Windows\Temp, which does have a ton of files. Every time it gets more files in there, and most of them are created by OfficeClickToRun.exe that runs as SYSTEM in Task Manager.

Right now the Temp Folder doesn't take a lot of space: only 85MB, but every about hour I use my laptop makes the Temp folder weight 250KB more.

Again, most of files are created by OfficeClickToRun.exe

When I search in the browser, I don't get any normal results: everything is about C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp, which I already cleared. The Disk Cleanup Utility Tool doesn't delete a lot of files from it.

My question is, if I delete the contents of a Temp folder, will my device be completely fine anyway, and am I able to disable the Office Click-To-Run service?

About the Temp folder, why am I afraid that something might happen, is it also contains system logs (.ETL files) about the Windows Update, so I am afraid to delete those.

My laptop specifications:

Processor: 8 cores 8 threads AMD Ryzen 7 4700U, 4.12GHz

RAM: 2 modules out of 2, each 4GB, 2667MHz, DDR4

Disk: Only 1 disk, 512GB SSD, divided to 2 disks (C:, D:)

CD or DVD: No CD or DVD slot.

GPU: AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics with 4.2GB Video RAM.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. DaveM121 868K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2022-04-25T16:46:29+00:00

    Hi Abdulqadir

    Rather than manually looking around your drive for this type of problem, the best option for drive maintenance is to run Disk Cleanup maybe once a month, you must run it twice as indicated below, so it removes all unnecessary files from your system.

    Open File Explorer

    Click on your hard drive

    On the Manage Tab - Disk Tools, click Cleanup

    Let Disk Cleanup do its initial scan

    Select Everything in the list and choose Delete

    Start Disk Cleanup again

    Let Disk Cleanup do its initial scan

    Important - this time in the resulting dialog, click 'Cleanup System Files'

    Let Disk Cleanup run another scan

    Select Everything in the list and choose Delete

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  1. DaveM121 868K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2022-04-25T16:24:41+00:00

    Hi Abdulqadir

    I am Dave, I will help you with this.

    Yes, it is safe to totally clear out that C:\Windows\Temp folder and the other main Temp folder in your user profile folder, you can manually select all files and press Delete, some files that are in use will refuse to delete, that is normal.

    Or you can run Disk Cleanup maybe once a week or month to keep your system clean

    The file sizes you mention are tiny, 250KB means that after 4 hours, your temp folder would be 1MB larger, that is less than the size of an average Word document.

    With regards to Click to Run, it is best to not disable that, you may experience problems with Microsoft Office.

    Are you running out of space on your drive, and if so, what size drive do you have?

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-04-25T17:13:21+00:00

    Hi Dave,

    Thank you again.

    I was also doing the same thing before, and about the user temp folder when I didn't clear it manually, running the disk cleanup utility tool and choosing "Temporarily Files" only was removing about 15 files out of 400.

    Clear System Files option was a bit making me nervous thinking my device would run unstable, but with your help, I now know that clicking on Clear System Files and checking all possible checkmarks won't damage my laptop.

    By the way, on my User Temporarily Directory there is one folder named WGI51DF.tmp.dir. At first I couldn't open it: it says You do not have permissions to this folder. Click Continue to get permanent permissions to this folder. Then I found one file named DIFXAPI.dll which was not usable for a long time. Although it's only 386KB, like nothing, but it actually makes my day not perfect anyway.

    This file was created when I installed my virtual machine for the first time. My old laptop and my virtual machine doesn't have this file and folder in there.

    I can't delete it as well:

    (Apologies if you can't read my computer's language)

    Translation:

    You need permission to perform this operation.

    What do I do? Should I still keep it? Although it's only 386KB so I guess it doesn't make any sense to delete it.

    About clicking on "Clear System Files". It says it can clear up to 4.74GB space. There is a couple of things that seem might make one or multiple functions inaccessiable:

    Windows Updates cleanup (3.30GB)

    Windows Update Files (500MB)

    Memory dump files for system errors (900MB, i think it's C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP)

    Thanks anyway, you actually helped me :)

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-04-25T16:43:16+00:00

    Hi Dave,

    Thank you for the help.

    I am not really running out of space. Although seeing this mess which has about 1.3K files (when looking at the properties) actually makes my day not perfect. I do not like seeing the folder that has at least 700 more files.

    111GB free out of 189GB on C:\

    Anyways, thank you for the help!

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