What the hell is this file? Can I delete it? [Solved]

[enith]

https://imgur.com/a/pLvmCDH

Finally figured out what the hell was taking up so much space on my computer. It's literally 62.5% this singular file. Is it actually important? Can I delete it? It's located in Owner > AppData > Local > Temp, so I assume it would be, but just want to be 100% sure.

Also, I know this that there are probably better places to ask such a question, but I literally have no social media, and this is affecting my ability to play games. I also know that many people on the Steam Forums are fairly tech savvy, so I figured someone would know.

Update: Aaaaand Deleted - https://i.imgur.com/iETHj6a.png
My pc hasn't exploded yet and I finally have a truly usable amount of hardrive space once again! Realizing that the file was only created a couple days ago, I figured it couldn't hurt to just get rid of it. I've also had issues in the past in which my pc has all of a sudden told me I was nearly out of hardrive space as well as showing it on my Acer C drive, only for the warning to go away a few days to a week later and the space to seemingly come back from nowhere. It's just never happened to such a large degree before, I always had a bit of usable space left, but this morning I woke up to only a couple hundred megabites free so I've kind of been scrambling throughout the day to try and figure out what was wrong. Seems like this is something that might just happen on occasion when I run BleachBit for whatever reason. Either way I guess I'll just be avoiding that program from here on out. I'm really grateful you all were able to help me out, and especially to rawWwRrr for helping me realize exactly what (most likely) happened. I just hope by avoiding BleachBit it won't happen again.

Thanks again to everyone who was nice enough to take a bit of time out of their day to help a random stranger on the internet with some computer troubles : )

[DarkCrystalMethod]

Given that its in your Temp directory its probably safe to delete it.
Perhaps you want to make a copy of it and put it back if it was needed for some reason?
Do you have an antivirus scanner that can take a look?
Start notepad and try reading it. Are there any English words or indication of file type?
I bet its a log file for collecting error messages... from something.
You should review all of your installed windows apps to see if you remember any of these programs writing to your temp directory.
Perhaps empty this folder completely(don't remove the folder itself), then wait a few minutes and see which files come back(which means you have a program running that creates these).
If it these files only come back after a reboot then check your startup programs.

"You may not like what you find..."
But good luck and welcome to becoming your own system administrator.

[Callahan420]

I would be cautious as stated above. Weird that it is a 7 zip file though.

[enith]

Originally posted by DarkCrystalMethod:

Perhaps you want to make a copy of it and put it back if it was needed for some reason?

I don't have enough space on my pc to do that. I only have 159GB of free space left, and that's after spending the day purging everything else I could find.


I was able to move that file out, most others failed because they were being used by Chrome.

So far it doesn't seem to have replaced it, though I haven't done a reboot yet.

I get an error saying it's too big to be opened in NotePad, then it says it's been opened successfully, but it's just completely blank.

I tried scanning it with Kaspersky, but it only lasted 4 seconds and said "No threats detected." Not sure if that's good or bad.

I'm not sure how to tell if a specific program is writing to my temp directory. How would I be able to know such a thing? Sounds like it would be pretty useful!


And thanks for the luck, haha : )

[enith]

Originally posted by Callahan420:

I would be cautious as stated above. Weird that it is a 7 zip file though.

I don't actually think it is, I think it's just showing that icon because I tried openeing it and 7zip is just one of my default apps. I'm not sure if this is common or not, but whenever I open certain kinds of files with a specific program, all those files show the icon of that program. Like if I open a txt or docx with a specific program, they will all usually take that programs icon on as their own, until I open it normally again. All of my docx files that I use for online classes are actually stuck with NotePad's icon, and I can't for the life of me figure out how to change them back.

[enith]

Originally posted by Callahan420:

I would be cautious as stated above. Weird that it is a 7 zip file though.

This is actually the stated file type - https://i.imgur.com/gBpS7fB.png

Type of file:
LAOSM1RAMDCVRJLBI9JGVLBJGJKD9GMNXP3NZNQ5AGYIV1NUR-EDPQO3RJI20QDFSMU2SATI9HICTMN (.laoSM1RAMdCvRjlbi9jGvLBjgjkD9GmNXP3nZNQ5AGYIV1nUr-edpqo3rJI20QdFsMU2sATI9HictMNQLvb0GaqFaILd6W8IwyVqPzJCKY6ysd5UknyAaCnAC79LuTOyJhURi1g)

have no idea what the hell it means

[DarkCrystalMethod]

The file name in other operating systems is completely without meaning but is only a convenience for the human user. Add a ".txt" to the end and then Windows will know its to be opened with notepad (I recommend Notepad++ as you can get just a little more detail and seems to open large files better).

[Iceira]

Its temp folder, no user install things in such, or should, so technical it can be wiped as junk. and
test such can be done with move content to sub folder as test.old and reboot pc and see if it effect pc or other things wait to delete it after a week to be sure. if you have not caugh that app use it then it cant be vital to system, you can even move content to external unit.

keep in mind i focus on the TEMP folder not other folder or app folder

it look like DL temp work that somehow is dump there, but again i have no clue why whatever app has not clean up after itself there. they are seen as temp files in that folder a place to work on, as i said why have whatever app not clean up after its install is the problem here can you have crashed doing a installation once and forgot about it.

[enith]

Originally posted by DarkCrystalMethod:

The file name in other operating systems is completely without meaning but is only a convenience for the human user. Add a ".txt" to the end and then Windows will know its to be opened with notepad (I recommend Notepad++ as you can get just a little more detail and seems to open large files better).

I put a .txt on the end of it and installed Notepad++, but it still says it's too big :/

[enith]

Originally posted by Iceira W10:

Its temp folder, no user install things in such, or they are seen as temp files in that folder a place to work on, as i said why have whatever app not clean up after its install is the problem here can you have crashed doing a installation once and forgot about it.

My pc is very old and feeble to say the least, I've had many crashes, errors, and surprise restarts for no apparent reason over the years. Could one of those really have created a temp file that large? Does that mean it would be safe to delete?

[enith]

Originally posted by Iceira W10:

test such can be done with move content to sub folder as test.old and reboot pc and see if it effect pc or other things wait to delete it after a week to be sure. if you have not caugh that app use it then it cant be vital to system, you can even move content to external unit.

I unfortunately don't have an external hardrive big enough to actually move it to, but I think I'll try what you suggested. I'll keep it in the new temporary folder on my desktop I moved it to, reboot and wait a week to see if anything happens with it, if not, I'll just delete it then.

Thanks for the help everyone : )

[rawWwRrr]

I'd be more concerned with how it got there rather than deciding whether or not to keep it. There is no reason to have such a large random file. If it was important, it wouldn't be in the temp folder.

If that were mine, I'd straight up delete it and just keep an eye on drive space going forward to see if a similar named temp file starts accumulating space. It could be as simple as Windows process that ran amuck or a task you started but didn't realize that caused the file creation.

[enith]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

I'd be more concerned with how it got there rather than deciding whether or not to keep it. There is no reason to have such a large random file. If it was important, it wouldn't be in the temp folder.

If that were mine, I'd straight up delete it and just keep an eye on drive space going forward to see if a similar named temp file starts accumulating space. It could be as simple as Windows process that ran amuck or a task you started but didn't realize that caused the file creation.

Yeah, I agree with you, but also just want to be 100% sure that it isn't important and won't turn out to needed for some obscure asinine reason.

I'll definitely keep a closer eye on accumulating drive space going forward though, if it happened once, it can probably happen again. I guess all I can hope for is that if it does happen again, I'll be able to figure out what did it.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by enith:

I guess all I can hope for is that if it does happen again, I'll be able to figure out what did it.

You have some clue. It says it was created at 2:38am on August 5. Can you think of what, if anything, you were doing at that time? Do you remember the system being bogged down at all on the 5th that might have come while it was writing a 1.7TB file? It would take a bit of time and some resources to create a file of that size.

[Blaagh]

just shift-del that, it does not belong there and can't be anything relevant

[enith]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Originally posted by enith:

I guess all I can hope for is that if it does happen again, I'll be able to figure out what did it.

You have some clue. It says it was created at 2:38am on August 5. Can you think of what, if anything, you were doing at that time? Do you remember the system being bogged down at all on the 5th that might have come while it was writing a 1.7TB file? It would take a bit of time and some resources to create a file of that size.

Hmm, I might have been running bleachbit, I let it do a full sweep clean of my pc once and a while specifically to get rid of temp files. I think I did actually do one on the 5th. It ended with some errors, but always does, so I didn't think anything of it. That was probably it, thanks for the insight!