All of the temp files in Windows

Windows can't know when to delete a temporary file. Windows has no direct knowledge of how the applications that create the temp files need them. Some programs use long running temp files that span multiple days and reboots. Some programs only need them for a few moments. Regardless, if Windows started randomly deleting files by itself, on its own whim, it would likely cause many apps to crash and function strangely.

Mystere said:

Windows can't know when to delete a temporary file. Windows has no direct knowledge of how the applications that create the temp files need them. Some programs use long running temp files that span multiple days and reboots. Some programs only need them for a few moments. Regardless, if Windows started randomly deleting files by itself, on its own whim, it would likely cause many apps to crash and function strangely.

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Then I wonder if I made a mistake by simply deleting everything in the temp folder.

My way was always to empty temp folders when first booting up, that way any programs that made them had finished using them.

I have IE set to empty Temporary files on closing. I only empty the files once a week though as part of my maintenance routine through the Disk Cleanup utility.

As I'm still learning my way around Windows 8 it is not something I've done yet, the ways I did it were all in previous versions of Windows.

I have a habit of deleting everything in the Windows\Temp folder every day, especially after applying updates or installing applications. Having a 120GB SSD really makes me more aware of the garbage that accumulates on the drive. It seems in the world of 2TB hard drives, I was sloppy about that, now I'm not!

Frank1 said:

Then I wonder if I made a mistake by simply deleting everything in the temp folder.

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Probably not. In your use, your probably fine to delete temporary files whenever you want, but Microsoft can't do it globally for every user because it would cause problems for some.