Disk Clean utilities , a few questions .

General Topics
1

I know there’s been quite a bit of discussion here on particular issues concerning Temp file cleaning , what I would like to know is some of the wildcard settings , and what they would actually do .
Basically my point here is that if you delete certain file types by inadvertently checking something you shouldn’t it can cause trouble.
In CCleaner I note there’s an option to delete the uninstallers for Windows updates. I ran it one day to see how much space could be saved and it was around 150 megabytes or more . I opted not to continue, mainly because it may be necessary to un-install an Update . (No I’m not going to mention the "Prefetch " option :wink: , forget I said that ;D )

I’m looking at HDCleaner at the moment. It has these options, which seem to me a bit dangerous because of my lack of knowledge :
File Masks
_
_*
??~
_mp
~**
bak
chk
gid
old
syd
tmp
Out of that list all I would select is"temp" .
I’d be interested to hear from some people with a better understanding what the heck could happen if you selected the regular expressions like _ , _* , ??* , _mp , ~** .
I’d like to know more about Temp file cleaning, I’m sure I’ve deleted important/useful things in the past .
‘0’ byte files is another questionable option for deletion. So what’s safe diskcleaning , and what’s not ???

Just found some more in another diskcleaner and wondered what impact " cleaning " could do to Windows or other programs :
.bak , .gid , .old , File_id.diz , .tmp , .dmp , mscreate.dir , scandisk log , .chk .

Sorry to seem so ignorant , or lazy , but I’d sure like to know when and if some of these file types should be deleted, and what better place to ask than here :slight_smile:
Any light shed on this would be greatly appreciated … Thanks.

2

Manual deletion (with a previous bakcup ;D) is the only safe method…

Anyway, temporary files set could be:
*.~??, *.~~~, *.—, *.??~, *.#Res, *.$$$, *.$db, *.@@@, *.mp, *.aps, *.as$, *.asd, *.bak, *.bsc, *.cdr, *.chk, *.da0, *.dar, *.db$, *.dir, *.dmp, *.ftg, *.fts, *.gid, *.ilk, *.mscreate, *.mtx, *.ncb, *.old, *.pch, *.rws, *.sbr, *.shs, *.syd, *.syd, *.temp, *.tmp, *.wa~, *.wbk, *.xar, .xlk, chklist., mscreate.dir, File_id.diz, scandisk.log

I don’t know more about:
_ and _*

Hope this helps.

3

Tech:

Manual deletion (with a previous bakcup ;D) is the *only* safe method...

Thanks Tech , I guessed as much ;D Obviously using *.bak would delete the backup though … :wink:

4

Oh, I mean an external (USB or floppy) backup.
But, seriously, I don’t think it’s necessary.
The most dangerous extension among them (if any) is *.dir
You can remove it and you’ll be safe. I won’t worry that much :wink:

5

Thanks Tech for clearing that up . When in doubt do nothing, then ask what may seem like silly questions ;D
-Cheers mate.

6

This extension cleaning is not accurate anymore.
All i’m using is my TEMP Cleaner. Most of junk leftovers are located in TEMP folders anyway…

7

Do you have the ‘accurate’ one? I mean, the set of extensions?

8

Problem is that many programs and games started using these extensions.