Thread: How do you display your computers hidden files and folders in Windows 8?

CP, Folder options, View, Uncheck Hide protected System Files. This will display all files on your HD.

Try to clean up the system a little. Programs, Administrative Tools, Disk Cleanup will help. You can actually set this to do a more thorough cleanup. I actually have a batch file I run to do this cleanup:

@Echo off
cls
cleanmgr /sageset:1000
del /F /S /Q "%systemroot%\temp\*.*"


del /F /S /Q "C:\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History\*. *"
del /F /S /Q "C:\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Low\Content.IE5\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Temporary Internet Files\Low\Content.IE5\*.*"

del /F /S /Q "C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:\Temp\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windo ws\Temporary Internet Files\Low\Content.IE5\*.*
del /F /S /Q "C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windo ws\History\*.*


::Rem: No need to duplicate the following section for each registered User
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%\Cookies\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%\recent\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%\Local Settings\cookies\*.*"

del /F /S /Q "%homepath%\Local Settings\History\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*.*"


del /F /S /Q "C:\$Recycle.Bin.Bin\*.*"

del /F /S /Q "C:\Recycled\*.*"

cleanmgr /sagerun:1000

Paste this into Notepad then save as Cleanup.bat to your desktop.

Note the line near the top cleanmgr /sageset:1000. This sets the Disk Cleanup routine to run on steroids. Check all the options.

If no files are in the chosen paths, No files found will be displayed.

Hi Medicted60
Thank you for taking the time that you did to provide all this information. I removed a lot from my hard drive with your suggestions. There were a lot of things that it didn't remove however, and that's because of the computer my son and I built. I am very fortunate to have a son who is a computer Engineer for Microsoft. There are many things about operating certain software and ways to do thing on the computer where I have an advantage over him, because that is not his specialty. He was able to help with this one though. I'm not qualified to give a full explanation, but I now understand part of what was going on. I have a 3.5ghz quad core machine with dual video cards and 32gb of RAM. As a result of all that RAM the computer took up a lot of space to provide an adequate page file for the machine. With that much RAM, I don't really need a page file and we got rid of it freeing up a lot of space. We actually freed up a total of 50 gb with your help and my sons, and solved a couple other problems along the way. Thanks very much for all the help. It is appreciated.

You are aware of the built in "Cleanmgr". This does most of the work, and, hopefully, fairly safely as it is designed for the OS. But better is Ccleaner. You will read reports that it causes errors, etc. It is from a company called Piriform, (http://www.piriform.com/)who have been around for many years. I have used it since XP, without mishaps. It can be optimised, so that it will retain your passwords or, if you wish, cookies.

This is what it looks like after a scan the computer I am using now, for example. If I selected detailed view, you would see all the items in the .bat file above.plus a few more. The program is also able to clean up your registry, but I prefer to do this manually or, for the most part, leave it alone.