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My Computer Is Telling Me I'm Running Out Of Storage Space But I Haven't Added Any New Programs or Data Files. What's Going On? - Erase internet files!

You don't have to add programs or data to your system to fill up your hard drive. Your computer is perfectly capable of doing that on its own.

Many programs create temporary (.TMP) files or log files as they run. In fact some of them can fill megabytes of disk space with useless material. To reclaim that wasted space, you need to prune your files occasionally.

Internet browsers are among the worst offenders. The Internet history and Internet cache programs can grow to tens of megabytes of material after a single session of web surfing. Other programs such as word processors and spreadsheets create shadow copies of documents to limit losses in case of a crash. Sometimes those copies aren't erased at the end of a session. Programs that monitor system performance or security often create log file after log file and don't erase any of them.

The key to reclaiming all that space is first to find it, second to know what it is, and third to delete what you don't need. Check the 'temp' file folder in your operating system, look for log files and temporary Internet files such as the cache and history, and look for other .TMP files.

If you have a high-speed connection to the Internet, the chances are that you don't need a large file for caching Internet files. By reducing this file size, you automatically can reduce the size of the temporary files your browser saves.

In Internet Explorer, open Tools | Internet Options. Select the Settings button in the middle of the box under the heading Temporary Internet files. A separate Settings box will open. Move the arrow in the center of the box under "Amount of disk space to use" to the far left.

If you use the new Mozilla Firefox browser, go to Tools | Options | Privacy | Cache and set it to 1000 KB of disk space.

Normally, your browser will want to take about 10 percent of the disk for a cache, but that's not necessary with a broadband Internet connection. A single megabyte of cache should be sufficient. Make a habit of checking for useless files every so often, delete them, and reclaim the wasted space.