PSA about slow running computers
 

I thought I had a virus that malware bytes wasn't picking up and that's why my computer was running slow. So I took it over to the geek squad.

Turns out I had 27 gigabytes of temporary files and that's what was slowing me down. Check your temporary files lol.

The guy at the store said most people have less than a gig of temp files. So. Check your temp files, because I'm sure some of you are nerds like me and are gonna find an obscene amount of temp files on your computer. My computer is running like new now that they're cleared out.

And this has been my Public Service Announcement about slow running computers.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GD6qtc2_AQA/maxresdefault.jpg

I got rid of ~1GB. XD Thanks for the PSA

It should be noted that it's not the size of the temporary files that makes a difference. It's how many of them there are and where they are.

There were a lot of them and they were all over the place hahahaha. >.< Thank you for the info Coda! I knew you'd pop in here with more information for me, I had a feeling!

...Ugh, thanks for reminding me that I should defrag my laptop at some point.

>.< I just ordered a new external harddrive. My old one decided to randomly eat half of my music files so I don't trust it. Also it's about ten years old.

I gotta back up my stuff, I'm not fully trusting this machine right now. It's back to running at normal speed but randomly freezing up for a few seconds now and then.

No, you shouldn't. Defragging hard drives hasn't been meaningful advice in like fifteen years. You will literally never see enough performance benefit from a defragmented hard drive over the life of the drive to pay for the time it takes to do it, and on a drive bigger than a few GB it takes a STUPIDLY long time to actually do it.

Seriously, if disk fragmentation is that bad of a problem for you, you're better off reformatting and reinstalling everything. You'd still end up with a defragmented drive at the end, plus you'd have the performance benefits of a fresh Windows installation. And it would take less time!

I mean I'm not saying I'm a total noob
but where do those files stay in the PC
like asking for a friend, of course

I run CCleaner at the beginning of every month. Gets rid of all my temp files and junk for me. :p

ohhh coda tell me more, tell me more!!! i love this!!!

yea the kid at the store who helped me with this said cccleaner was the way to go.
i have a feeling coda knows more than the kid at the store though....

lol if it's anything like the people working at the Best Buy I went to before, even I know more about computers than them. :x But yeah, I like CCleaner and my tech-savy friend, who actually built me this PC, says that's the way to go as well.

Also, even though I know defragging isn't necessary nowadays, I kinda miss it. I liked watching the process.

Keep in mind that cache and temporary files exist for a reason; they aren't just junk. They're extra memory for various programs. Yes, they can recompute or redownload everything they need if you delete them, but that takes time that you wouldn't have needed to spend if you hadn't deleted them.

I mean there's nothing especially wrong with CCleaner, but I think it's a bit overzealous. So if you do use it, use it when you need it instead of on a routine basis.

I don't know where temp files are stored on Windows nowadays. I haven't used Windows on a regular basis in years.

Well clearing the files worked to speed things up for me. How would you reccomend I go about this in the future Coda? Run the CCleaner next time I'm slowed down real bad like I was? Or figure out where these files are and manually remove the ones I know I don't need?

I mostly use CCleaner to get rid of all my browser junk since I don't really need a bunch of temp files saved for sites I haven't been to lately. Though I never have problems with my PC's performance or do much other than watch videos and surf the web, so yeah. It's not really a big deal whether I clean my system or not I guess, I just like doing so sometimes. :p I've never had any issues from using it, personally.

I had a regular de-fragging thing going on (nightly or weekly or something) and I did have CC-Cleaner but I've heard mixed reviews on it. I haven't noticed much of a slow-down in my comp over the life I've had it, except in gaming performance, which I assume has as much to do with my components being out of date and hitting their life-span. My battery has started griping at me recently.

Outside of what Windows 10 does on a regular basis, I'm not actually sure what's keeping things organized.