If you get your technology advice from the Orlando Sentinel, I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be deleting random files from your hard drive:
Photos, videos, music and unneeded applications — and the files that you download to install them — can also slow down and clutter up your computer.
Go to the place where you store these items on your computer, and choose the view them by “details.” or “list,” if you are on a Mac.
Then click on “Size” to sort your items by how big they are. Try to delete as many large files as you can. If you are unsure about deleting a file, looking at the “Date Modified” field to see the last time you used that file may help you decide.
The same thing goes for .exe files, which are the files you download to install a program. Once you have a program installed, there’s no need to hang on to the .exe file that you used to install it. The equivalents on a Mac are .dmg files.
Wow. That doesn’t seem like a very good idea to me.
Update: The story seems to have been modified with some less-terrible advice:
An earlier version of this column may have given the wrong impression about deleting .exe files as a way to clean up your computer. This may have been misinterpreted as an instruction to delete ‘all’ .exe files which was not my intention. You should be very careful when deleting these files and only delete ones that you are sure were used to install a program. A good way to identify these files is if the filename contains the word ‘install’ or ‘installer.’ These installer .exe files are typically downloaded from the Internet, often saved to your desktop and should not be confused with the .exe files used to run programs on your computer. If you have any doubt as to whether an .exe file should be deleted or not, don’t delete it. Deleting the wrong .exe files can seriously harm your PC.
Better late than never, I suppose.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.