Where are my temporary downloaded files

Temporary files, also known as temp files refer to files that Windows or Apps need to store momentarily, after which they are no longer useful or needed. These files include; leftover files after you uninstall or update a program, files from an old Windows installation, error and upgrade logs among others.

While these files are not harmful to your system, they can quickly build up, occupying a significant space of your storage space. Therefore, deleting these file could be necessary to create more space on your hard drive. Related: How to view and delete temporary files in Mac? You can also use Storage Sense to automatically delete temporary files that are no longer required. To do so;. This allows Windows 10 to automatically remove all the temporary files that you no longer need from your computer.

Find and double-click the "com. You can find different types of Safari browsing cache in this folder. If you're using another web browser, look for your browser's software company here.

For example, look for "Google" if you're using Chrome, and "Mozilla" for Firefox. Double-click the "fsCachedData" folder. You can find your Safari browsing cache data files here. Method 2. Open your Start menu. Alternatively, you can open the search or Cortana from your menu bar.

Type Show hidden files and folders into the menu search. Your file and folder settings will show up at the top of the search results.

Click the Show hidden files and folders option in the search results. This will open your Folder Options window. Select "Show hidden files, folders, and drives" in the Advanced Settings box.

When this option is selected, you can view and browse all hidden and system folders on your computer. Click the Apply button. You can now view and open hidden folders.

This app looks like a desktop computer icon. You can find it on your Start menu or on your desktop. Double-click your main drive. This is the hard drive where your Windows system is set up. Double-click the "Users" folder.

You can find a list of all the users saved on your computer here. Double-click your user folder. Your user folder is named by your user name. You can find your user files here. Double-click the "App Data" folder. This is a hidden folder so it looks like a transparent folder icon in your user folder. Find and double-click the "Microsoft" folder in Local.

You can find your Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge cache in this folder. If you're using a different web browser, look for your browser's software company here. Several of these folders are created each day at the same time I have Windows update scheduled to apply updates.

They are all empty, and they can be manually deleted. So, the question is "where can I look to find out how to tell windows to stop leaving these folders on my disk?

This is not an accurate observation. However, product installers executed locally may chose to extract their installation files into a folder of the root of the volume with the most free space. Absolutely agree. However, in such instances, and presuming familiarity with the behavior of the likely FEW installers that would be executed on a Server Operating System, it is also possible to PRE-extract those files onto the volume of your choice.

Lawrence Garvin, M. First, I'm not a sounding board for official complaints to Microsoft. They have channels for doing that if that's what you want to do. I also, unlike a Microsoft employee, have the right to bail on the conversation when it becomes too pedantic. Or perhaps a more fair answer would be that it's not exclusive to Microsoft. Microsoft products have been known to exhibit this behavior, I'm not denying that fact.

So while I feel your pain Well I can confirm this behaviour categorically. When running Windows Update in the cases I have observed for WHS - we use them as little test targets for our development it will generate folders like the ones described on the drive with the greatest available space - There it decompresses the updates prior to installing them.

We have verified this in multiple examples looking at the actual files. It also only occurs during running an update something we only do manually on the test systems. So this is clearly caused by an MS "feature" of Windows Update. It's a nightmare for us because it pollutes data which is supposed to be an exact image of our test data and the Update junk gets synced up to our SAN. Ok then ALL product teams are doing it.

Curiously these all chose to put their temp files on the largest drive then to make the Windows Update Service Team look bad? Should we then complain in every single product area? That seems a lot of excessive cross-posting especially when they only time this happens is when doing a lot of updates through Windows Update at once. Still feel Update is the culprit here. It went straight for the 10TB array on V:. Now, if your gripe is about where the working directory is built, then I'd say you're barking up a tree you'll never climb.

If your gripe is about installers that fail to clean-up after themselves, then I'm totally on the climb with you I'm just saying you need to be climbing the right tree. My gripe is actually both because both behaviours are just dumb There are numerous examples where updates need to be kicked off manually and similarly many situations where certain drives should be off limits.

Then to rub salt in the wounds all these temp folders get left behind. Now right-click on your Windows hard drive, usually C: , then click on Properties. Once in the Properties window, click on Disk Cleanup. Click on Clean up system files button to be able to remove more types of files. Click the check boxes next to everything that you want to delete in the Disk Cleanup window.

As the description says, it will delete all but the most recent system restore point. The clean up may take a while to complete. Corbin Schon on October 13, at pm. Submit a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Here are 11 Ways to Fix It! However, the location of the folder might differ from one system to another or even for different users' profiles. In order to restore temp file, you need to understand that once you close the program, the file gets erased.

Plus, as the file stores a different type of data, it is hard to open the files without knowing what is inside it. Step 1: For Windows 10, use Cortana and open the Search box. For Windows 8. And for Windows 8. In the earlier versions of Windows, you can simply click on the Start button to open the Search box and find Run. This command will open the designated temp folder on your system.