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I use windows 7, and i am running out of space on partition C. I want to delete some files from Program Files, Program Files (x86) and Windows folders , however, i am afraid not to delete by accident something that is useful.

My criteria to distinguish between something 'useful' and something else 'not useful' is the time that has passed since that program has been used. Thus, my question is: can i find out the last time a file has been used? Windows does offer information about the last modified time, but that is different.

UPDATE: i have tried the solution with the "Date accessed" column. While the name Date acessed is intuitive and would suggest the last time the file was accessed, the actual information that it contains is irrelevant. I have tested this, and the "Date accessed" column certainly displays inaccurate information

Newton fan 01
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1 Answers1

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EDIT: Seems that the method below is buggy, since the last access date feature is disabled by default in Windows 7. As a result the answer to a similar question here applies: Nop. It's not possible.

First of all, let me warn you that cleaning out those folders (and any folder) like that, is a bad idea. I'll get back on that later.

If you realy must, you can right click on the columns in File Explorer, and select the "More..." option.

enter image description here

Then, you select the "Date accessed" option:

enter image description here

Now, why is cleaning like this a bad idea?

  • I'm not entirely sure the access date of core system files will be updated if the system loads them into memory.
  • Especially with system files, it's not because they haven't been used for over a year, that they are not important. You will break a lot of stuff if you just randomly delete "old" system files.

So, what should you do?

https://www.howtogeek.com/125923/7-ways-to-free-up-hard-disk-space-on-windows/

Especially running WinDirStat is one of the best ways to get some insights into what is taking up so much space. This can be a forgotten video collection, a log file that has been going crazy, ...

Wouter
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