On a Windows PC, not all space is available to the user for his files and part of the disk is used for the cache of temporary files . Caches are special system folders where files are saved to speed up uploads.
The most classic of the caches is that of the web browser, where the files downloaded from the websites are saved so that, if it happens again in those same websites, it is not necessary to reload them from scratch.
However, this is just one of the hidden caches on a Windows PC and you can be surprised by the amount of space occupied by these temporary file folders and by how much information, even personal, is kept.
In general, cache files are useful for speeding up system performance.
In some cases, however, it can also be useful to clear the caches, both to recover disk space, to clear all the junk, and to erase traces of computer use .
below, let's see where the main Windows 7 caches are hidden so as to know how to delete all their content when necessary.
READ ALSO: Free up disk space on the hard disk in 8 ways
1) Temporary cache files
Windows has a system folder where all temporary files are stored.
Generally speaking, these temporary files are created while using programs such as Word and are then automatically deleted when that program is closed.
However, this does not always happen correctly and, over time, the temporary file folder can grow and increase the space occupied.
You can use the disk cleanup tool to clear this cache.
Open the Start menu, search for Cleanup to find the utility that frees up disk space by deleting unnecessary files and launch it.
When prompted, select the drive where Windows is installed (usually C :), wait for the analysis and, in the window that appears, select the temporary files and press OK .
2) Image thumbnail cache
Whenever you open a folder with photos and images, Windows creates a file that contains the thumbnails of these files, that is, the thumbnails of the images that appear small inside a folder.
This also happens for video files, when a preview frame is shown.
Thanks to this cache, if you open a folder full of images, you won't have to wait long to see all the previews, which otherwise would have to be loaded from scratch every time.
At the same time, however, it is recommended that you delete this thumbnail cache every few months to prevent it from becoming too large.
To clear the image thumbnail cache, open Disk Cleanup as seen in step 3 from the Start menu, select the disk and then uncheck all the boxes except the one called Preview and press OK.
3) Restore points.
System Restore is one of the most useful emergency features of Windows, to quickly resolve unexpected problems and errors.
Only in case you urgently need to free up disk space, you can delete the files created with the recovery points or reduce their size.
To do this configuration, open System, from the Control Panel, go to Advanced system settings, then to System Protection and select the disk where protection is activated (usually disk C).
Then press on Configure and choose the amount of space to devote to restoring the configuration.
Pressing the Delete button deletes all the restore points (which, I repeat, it is not convenient to delete unless you need space).
4) Browser cache
Every time you visit a web page, the browser adds all the files that make up that page to the cache, (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images).
In this way, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, the next time you visit the same page, the browser uses the cached files to load it faster.
Each browser has its own cache and, in another guide, we have already explained how to clear the cache on Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer.
5) Windows Update Cache
Windows keeps a cache of all Windows Update files, which can come in handy if you need to reinstall an update.
In some cases the Windows update can be very large, as in the case of the November 10 update of Windows 10 which can use up to 24GB of space.
To clear the Windows Update cache, you must first stop the Windows Update service.
To do this, open the Start menu, search for CMD, right click on CMD and run the command prompt as administrator.
Then type the command
net stop wuauserv
Press Enter .
Next, open the C: \ Windows \ SoftwareDistribution \ Download folder and delete all the contents.
You can now reactivate the Windows Update service, from the CMD command prompt, by typing:
net start wuauserv
6) Windows Store Cache
One of the biggest changes of Windows 8 and Windows 10 is the Windows Store where to download applications.
Of course, Windows stores information about downloads made through the Windows Store.
In case of problems with the store or to recover space, you can clear the cache of the Windows Store with an internal tool in Windows called WSReset.exe .
To use it, open a Run window by pressing the Windows + R keys together, write WSReset.exe and then press OK.
Let the PC do its job until the Windows Store starts with the cache cleared.
7) DNS cache
When you access a website, the computer asks a network of servers called the Domain Name System, where that site is located.
About how this mechanism works we wrote in the article on how to change DNS on PC, Mac and router.
What interests us now is the fact that Windows temporarily stores the requested sites with any browser in a text file which is the DNS cache.
Clearing the DNS cache can solve any connection problems and completely eliminates the traces of what has been seen on the internet.
To do this, open a CMD command prompt window as administrator from the Start menu (see previous points) and type:
ipconfig / flushdns
Except for DNS Cache, all other Windows cache files and also those of other used programs can be deleted in one fell swoop using a program like CCleaner, useful to keep your PC clean of useless stuff.
