In the guide that follows we will show you how to clear windows main caches so you know how to delete all their contents when necessary without having to use third-party cleaning programs, since Windows already offers everything you need to perform this type of cleaning.
READ ALSO: Free up disk space on your hard drive in 8 ways
1) System temporary 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 files folder can grow and increase the space occupied.
Open the Start menu, search Cleaning to find the utility that frees disk space by deleting unnecessary files and run 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 on OK.
2) Cache of image thumbnails
Whenever we open a folder with photos and images, Windows creates a file that contains thumbnails of these files, ie thumbnails of the images that appear small inside a folder. This is also the case 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 a long time to see all the previews, which otherwise would have to load again every time. This feature is very useful but it is advisable to delete this thumbnail cache every 2-3 months to avoid it becoming too large and difficult to manage even for the most powerful PC.
To clear the image thumbnail cache, let’s open the tool Cleaning disk seen in the previous chapter, we select the main disk, uncheck all the boxes except the one called Preview and click OK.
3) Restore points
System Restore is one of the most useful Windows emergency functions for quickly resolving unexpected problems and errors. Just in case we urgently need to free up disk space, we can recover a lot of space by deleting files created with restore points.
To quickly delete the restore points, open the tool Cleaning disk seen a little while ago, we press down on System File Cleanup, carry out a new scan, click on More options at the top and finally click on Clean up in the section System Restore and Shadow Copies.
If, on the other hand, the recovery point files tend to be too large we can reduce their number by configuring the size of system restore.
4) Cache del browser
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). 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 we can quickly clear it by reading our guide on how to clear the cache on all modern browsers.
5) Windows Update Cache
Windows keeps a cache of all Windows Update files, which can come in handy in case you need to reinstall an update. In some cases the Windows update can be very large and take up several GB of space, which we can retrieve periodically (as soon as we realize that the update was successful).
To clear the Windows Update cache let’s go to the folder C:WindowsSoftwareDistributionDownload and we delete all content within it.
6) Cache Microsoft Store
One of the biggest changes in Windows 10 and Windows 11 is the Microsoft Store where you can 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 Microsoft Store with an internal tool in Windows called WSReset.exe.
To use it we open a Run window by pressing the keys together Windows + R, we write in the text field WSReset.exe and click OK to make the changes effective.
7) Cache DNS
When you access a website, your computer asks a network of servers called the Domain Name System where that site is located. On how this mechanism works we wrote in the article how to change DNS. 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 fix any connection problems and completely eliminate traces of what you have seen on the internet. To do this we open the Start menu, look for the command prompt (also typing CMD), press the right button on the executable, choose Run as administrator and, in the new window that will open, we type:
ipconfig /flushdns
We confirm with the key Enter The Enter keyboard. Now the DNS cache is empty and all traces of our browsing are deleted.
8) Font Cache
Windows uses a folder to store the cache of fonts used by programs and browsers. If this folder becomes saturated or corrupted, the selected fonts cannot be opened correctly. To remedy this, open the Start menu, type Services, identifichiamo it Windows Font Cache Service, press on it with the right button and choose the item Stop.
After blocking the font service let’s go to the folder C:WindowsServiceProfilesLocalServiceAppDataLocal opening each part of the path manually (unlocking the hidden Windows folders), cancelliamo i file .Which that we find inside and delete all the contents in the folder FontCache. At the end, just restart the computer for the changes to take effect.
Conclusions
Clearing all computer caches will help us keep the computer clean and fast over time, also erasing traces of programs and sites visited. Except for DNS Cache all other Windows cache files and even those of other used programs can be deleted in one go using a program such as CCleaner, useful in keeping your PC clean of useless stuff.
On Windows 10 and Windows 11 we can also use the Memory sensor to keep the hard disk free, automatically deleting unnecessary files.
