As you make your way through the Internet, your browser writes a large number of temporary files to your computer’s hard drive. It caches files like images and video files so that when you visit that site again, the page will load faster (because it pulls the files directly from your computer and not have to download them again). This is particularly true if you have setup your browser to allow offline browsing. While this is a great idea, if you spend a fair amount of time on the net everyday, the amount of space used up can grow pretty large! For a cleaner - read: better performing - computer you should clean out these temporary folders periodically and defrag your hard drive!

Here is a How To for both FF2 and IE7


Firefox 2

  1. Click Tools on the toolbar and click “Clear Private Data . . .” or use the keyboard shortcut: CTRL + Shift + DEL
  2. Make sure that “Cache” is the only thing checked
  3. Click the “Clear Private Data Now”button

Clear Firefox's Temporary Internet Files!

Internet Explorer 7

Warning: Doing the following steps will delete all temporary files which, in Internet Explorer, includes cookies. IE does not allow you to chose what to delete like Firefox does! If you choose to do this, you will have to log back into web pages all of your web pages (all of the pages where you checked the “Remember Me” check box when you logged in), as that information is stored in cookies. Make sure you know all of your passwords!

Consider using a more user friendly browser: Firefox 2! It’s free!!

  1. Click Tools on the toolbar and click “Internet Options” (sorry, no keyboard shortcut!)
  2. In the “General” tab, under “Browsing history”, click the “Delete” button

    Almost There . . .

  3. In the “Temporary Internet Options” section, click the “Delete files…” button

    Not There Yet!

  4. In the next dialog that opens, click the “Yes” button
  5. Close all dialog boxes