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What Are Junk Files?

After a task has been completed, leftover files may stay on your PC. For instance, whenever you open a document, Microsoft ensures that everything will run smoothly by creating a temporary file. This file also serves as a backup for your work in case anything disrupts it. Whenever you access the web, your browser downloads temporary Internet files. So, when you re-visit a particular site, your browser will pre-load the saved files to allow the pages to open faster. Windows also creates system files even when you simply shut down or boot your computer.

At one point, these files were used for a certain purpose. However, they do not get deleted automatically after they’ve completed their task—that is how they become junk files. Eventually, your device will accumulate all these unnecessary files, which will lead to them hogging your device’s resources.

What Can I Consider Junk Files?

• Temporary Browser Files – These are created to shorten the loading time of web pages and remain on your computer permanently, cluttering your drive.
• Thumbnails – These are previews of images. The next time you try to open a photo, you will see a shorter load time. Thumbnails are safe to delete, but loading the same images will take a longer time.
• Downloaded Program Files– These are files that come with application installers and don’t get deleted automatically. Once the app is installed, these files are usually no longer needed. Unless deleted, they will start to accumulate and unnecessarily take up a lot of storage space.
• System Memory Dumps– These are files that are created whenever your PC undergoes a forced shutdown due to malfunctions.
• Crash Reports – These are archived reports about system or application crashes that occurred on your computer.
• Crash Data Dumps– While they are similar to crash reports, crash data files are bigger, so they can quickly take up a lot of storage space.
• Recycle Bin – This is the folder where your system stores all your deleted files. It empties itself automatically only when you set a maximum size for it. Otherwise, it will continue to store data until you manually delete the files.
• Windows.old Files – These are files that your operating system stores in case you want to go back to an older version of Windows. It is worth noting that they can occupy at least 8 GB of space. Therefore, you should think about deleting these files, especially if you don’t see yourself using the older version of your OS again.

Why It’s Important to Delete Junk Files

Most people make the mistake of thinking that junk files are completely harmless. Unfortunately, the truth is, once your computer has become overloaded with these files, all sorts of issues may start to spring up like mushrooms.

One of the primary issues you’ll deal with is these junk files consuming a lot of disk space. If you’ve never cleaned these unnecessary files out since the time you first used your device, then you may be dealing with gigabytes of wasted space. The question is, what can you do if disk space is full? It is worth noting that even relatively new PCs still have at least a gigabyte or two of junk files. You can start running out of space because of these files. It is vital to perform disk cleanup regularly, especially when you have an SSD.

Another issue that may be caused by junk accumulation is slower PC performance. Because of outdated temporary files, your operating system may take more time to open programs, locate documents, launch web pages, and perform other tasks. Your computer may even suffer from longer boot times because of too many junk files on your disk. So, aside from reclaiming valuable disk space, getting rid of junk files can also make your PC run faster.

How to Delete Junk Files in Windows

Leaving unnecessary files and programs on your PC simply puts valuable disk space to waste. What’s more, accumulations of such elements may make your computer work harder than it has to. Since your system has to sift and dig through these junk files, it takes longer to find what it needs to perform tasks.

Now, you can perform a disk cleanup to erase temporary and unwanted files. However, you need to go through a series of steps before you can successfully complete the process. Thankfully, there is an easier yet safe and reliable way to reclaim valuable disk space. You can use One Click Scanner. What’s great about this tool is it can resolve issues in the following areas:

• Disk Space
• System Stability
• Overall PC Performance

Under Disk Space Issues, BoostSpeed can wipe out all kinds of unnecessary files, which take up valuable disk space and reduce system efficiency. It is worth noting that junk files can also cause various scans to operate longer. So, without regularly running a cleanup of your disk, you may notice that antivirus scans, search operations, disk defragmentation, and other similar operations are running slower than usual. So, we recommend that you perform a regular cleanup with BoostSpeed. Here are the steps:

1. Launch Auslogics BoostSpeed, then go to the ‘My Scanner’ tab.
2. Now, the first thing you need to do is check the box under Disk Space. Make sure that the boxes for the other two sections—Stability and Performance—have been deselected.
3. On the left, select Disk Space. Doing so will show you a comprehensive list of the categories and sub-categories for the junk files that you can locate and remove. Go through the list and determine which ones you’d like to exclude from the scan and cleanup, if any.
4. Once you’re done selecting the items, start the checkup by clicking the Scan Disk Space/Scan All button.
5. After the scan process is finished, click the ‘See report and customize’ link. You will see a detailed list of all the junk files on your computer. If you want, you can exclude any of the items from the cleanup.
6. Remove selected junk files by clicking the ‘Resolve All’ button.

After performing these steps, you will be able to use the disk space you freed up to store more important files. And we also recommend that you use Duplicate File Finder, which will help you get rid of unneeded file copies to clear even more space on your drives.