File cleanup of .txt files

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Kirk Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

So why can't you sort the .txt files that Everything found and then
select the ones you want to delete with a date range? Use Ctrl+A to
select all files or select one file and use Shift+Click on another file
to select the files within that range, and then press the Del key. You
use the same key or mouse shortcuts in Everything that you use in
Windows/File Explorer.

Everything may hang (become unresponsive) when you select thousands of
files despite it using a database to record the filenames. You might
want to try FileLocator Lite whose first search is slow (but subsequent
search are fast due to the caching in the first search) and selecting
thousands of files to right-click (to get the context menu to select
Del) doesn't hang it indefinitely. With thousands of files to delete,
you may want to first disable the Recycle Bin; else, you will end up
moving thousands of files into the Recycle Bin instead of actually
deleting them.

You could use robocopy in a command shell to move all *.txt files into a
temporary folder, zip up the folder (to have the .zip around in case you
find later that you were overly aggressive in moving/deleting the
files), and then delete the temporary folder. Run "robocopy /?" to see
the arguments and all the switches you can specify.

On 1/1/19 3:13 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Kirk Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

So why can't you sort the .txt files that Everything found and then
select the ones you want to delete with a date range? Use Ctrl+A to
select all files or select one file and use Shift+Click on another file
to select the files within that range, and then press the Del key. You
use the same key or mouse shortcuts in Everything that you use in
Windows/File Explorer.

Everything may hang (become unresponsive) when you select thousands of
files despite it using a database to record the filenames. You might
want to try FileLocator Lite whose first search is slow (but subsequent
search are fast due to the caching in the first search) and selecting
thousands of files to right-click (to get the context menu to select
Del) doesn't hang it indefinitely. With thousands of files to delete,
you may want to first disable the Recycle Bin; else, you will end up
moving thousands of files into the Recycle Bin instead of actually
deleting them.

You could use robocopy in a command shell to move all *.txt files into a
temporary folder, zip up the folder (to have the .zip around in case you
find later that you were overly aggressive in moving/deleting the
files), and then delete the temporary folder. Run "robocopy /?" to see
the arguments and all the switches you can specify.

or move them to the trash.
you can then restore.

Big Al wrote:

On 1/1/19 3:13 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Kirk Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

So why can't you sort the .txt files that Everything found and then
select the ones you want to delete with a date range? Use Ctrl+A to
select all files or select one file and use Shift+Click on another file
to select the files within that range, and then press the Del key. You
use the same key or mouse shortcuts in Everything that you use in
Windows/File Explorer.

Everything may hang (become unresponsive) when you select thousands of
files despite it using a database to record the filenames. You might
want to try FileLocator Lite whose first search is slow (but subsequent
search are fast due to the caching in the first search) and selecting
thousands of files to right-click (to get the context menu to select
Del) doesn't hang it indefinitely. With thousands of files to delete,
you may want to first disable the Recycle Bin; else, you will end up
moving thousands of files into the Recycle Bin instead of actually
deleting them.

You could use robocopy in a command shell to move all *.txt files into a
temporary folder, zip up the folder (to have the .zip around in case you
find later that you were overly aggressive in moving/deleting the
files), and then delete the temporary folder. Run "robocopy /?" to see
the arguments and all the switches you can specify.

or move them to the trash.
you can then restore.

With thousands of files to delete, one of my suggestions was to
*disable* the Recycle Bin; else, every delete will actually perform a
move which takes longer to update the file table than simply marking the
first cluster as unallocated. If the OP disables the Recycle Bin to
speed up the delete process, there is no "trash" to keep old copies of
the pseudo-deleted files. With moving the files into the Recycle Bin,
the "delete" of 19,000 files could take hours depending on the hardware
the OP has in his computer during which the OS becomes very slow or even
unresponsive.

On 1/1/2019 3:34 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Big Al wrote:

On 1/1/19 3:13 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Kirk Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

So why can't you sort the .txt files that Everything found and then
select the ones you want to delete with a date range? Use Ctrl+A to
select all files or select one file and use Shift+Click on another file
to select the files within that range, and then press the Del key. You
use the same key or mouse shortcuts in Everything that you use in
Windows/File Explorer.

Everything may hang (become unresponsive) when you select thousands of
files despite it using a database to record the filenames. You might
want to try FileLocator Lite whose first search is slow (but subsequent
search are fast due to the caching in the first search) and selecting
thousands of files to right-click (to get the context menu to select
Del) doesn't hang it indefinitely. With thousands of files to delete,
you may want to first disable the Recycle Bin; else, you will end up
moving thousands of files into the Recycle Bin instead of actually
deleting them.

You could use robocopy in a command shell to move all *.txt files into a
temporary folder, zip up the folder (to have the .zip around in case you
find later that you were overly aggressive in moving/deleting the
files), and then delete the temporary folder. Run "robocopy /?" to see
the arguments and all the switches you can specify.

or move them to the trash.
you can then restore.

With thousands of files to delete, one of my suggestions was to
*disable* the Recycle Bin; else, every delete will actually perform a
move which takes longer to update the file table than simply marking the
first cluster as unallocated. If the OP disables the Recycle Bin to
speed up the delete process, there is no "trash" to keep old copies of
the pseudo-deleted files. With moving the files into the Recycle Bin,
the "delete" of 19,000 files could take hours depending on the hardware
the OP has in his computer during which the OS becomes very slow or even
unresponsive.

use "FORFILES" in a Batch file

--
Zaidy036

Zaidy036 wrote:

On 1/1/2019 3:34 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Big Al wrote:

On 1/1/19 3:13 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Kirk Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

So why can't you sort the .txt files that Everything found and then
select the ones you want to delete with a date range? Use Ctrl+A to
select all files or select one file and use Shift+Click on another file
to select the files within that range, and then press the Del key. You
use the same key or mouse shortcuts in Everything that you use in
Windows/File Explorer.

Everything may hang (become unresponsive) when you select thousands of
files despite it using a database to record the filenames. You might
want to try FileLocator Lite whose first search is slow (but subsequent
search are fast due to the caching in the first search) and selecting
thousands of files to right-click (to get the context menu to select
Del) doesn't hang it indefinitely. With thousands of files to delete,
you may want to first disable the Recycle Bin; else, you will end up
moving thousands of files into the Recycle Bin instead of actually
deleting them.

You could use robocopy in a command shell to move all *.txt files into a
temporary folder, zip up the folder (to have the .zip around in case you
find later that you were overly aggressive in moving/deleting the
files), and then delete the temporary folder. Run "robocopy /?" to see
the arguments and all the switches you can specify.

or move them to the trash.
you can then restore.

With thousands of files to delete, one of my suggestions was to
*disable* the Recycle Bin; else, every delete will actually perform a
move which takes longer to update the file table than simply marking the
first cluster as unallocated. If the OP disables the Recycle Bin to
speed up the delete process, there is no "trash" to keep old copies of
the pseudo-deleted files. With moving the files into the Recycle Bin,
the "delete" of 19,000 files could take hours depending on the hardware
the OP has in his computer during which the OS becomes very slow or even
unresponsive.

use "FORFILES" in a Batch file

That would eliminate the moving of "deleted" files into the Recycle Bin.
However, I would test a bit to see if I could follow the command with a
" nul" to eliminate wasting time to display the stdout of each cmd
executed by forfiles.

On Tue, 1 Jan 2019 14:34:52 -0600, VanguardLH
wrote:

Big Al wrote:

On 1/1/19 3:13 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Kirk Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

So why can't you sort the .txt files that Everything found and then
select the ones you want to delete with a date range? Use Ctrl+A to
select all files or select one file and use Shift+Click on another file
to select the files within that range, and then press the Del key. You
use the same key or mouse shortcuts in Everything that you use in
Windows/File Explorer.

Everything may hang (become unresponsive) when you select thousands of
files despite it using a database to record the filenames. You might
want to try FileLocator Lite whose first search is slow (but subsequent
search are fast due to the caching in the first search) and selecting
thousands of files to right-click (to get the context menu to select
Del) doesn't hang it indefinitely. With thousands of files to delete,
you may want to first disable the Recycle Bin; else, you will end up
moving thousands of files into the Recycle Bin instead of actually
deleting them.

You could use robocopy in a command shell to move all *.txt files into a
temporary folder, zip up the folder (to have the .zip around in case you
find later that you were overly aggressive in moving/deleting the
files), and then delete the temporary folder. Run "robocopy /?" to see
the arguments and all the switches you can specify.

or move them to the trash.
you can then restore.

With thousands of files to delete, one of my suggestions was to
*disable* the Recycle Bin; else, every delete will actually perform a
move which takes longer to update the file table than simply marking the
first cluster as unallocated. If the OP disables the Recycle Bin to
speed up the delete process, there is no "trash" to keep old copies of
the pseudo-deleted files. With moving the files into the Recycle Bin,
the "delete" of 19,000 files could take hours depending on the hardware
the OP has in his computer during which the OS becomes very slow or even
unresponsive.

Emboldened by your answer, I searched again. Turns out that all
of the 19,608 log*.txt files except 409 of them were related to
the solitaire game. I finally did the deletions by month. The
results for 2017 show that by month the least number of log*.txt
files I had was 374 and the largest number was 689.

The only other numerous log.txt files are for an HP\TAInstaller.
There are 398 of them which I am leaving alone.

I've played Klondike solitaire, and it still remembers the total
number of games that I've played, so I didn't make that go away.

Thanks again for your help.

On 01/01/2019 23:00, Kirk Bubul wrote:
Emboldened by your answer, I searched again. Turns out that all
of the 19,608 log*.txt

There is no such thing as log*.txt.

It is either *.log or *.txt.

How old are you? You must be nearing the end of your life considering
you have started clearing your mess before you die.



--
With over 950 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Tue, 01 Jan 2019 13:59:19 -0600, Kirk
Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of

No, you shouldn't get rid of these files.

Starting in 2019, you'll be expected to file annual reports on how much
Solitaire you play.

The US governement will use this data to create standards, to compare
Federal employee Solitaire use with that by non-employees. The law
specifies that employees may play Solitaire no more than 120% of what
non-employees do.

If you remove your files you will be in violation of the reporting law,
subject to a fine and up to 30-days imprisonment for willful violation.
That's for a first offense.

the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Tue, 01 Jan 2019 13:59:19 -0600, Kirk
Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it. When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txt on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on

What's a typical file name? I want to see if I have these files.

my machine. Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files? While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

On Wed, 02 Jan 2019 05:41:45 -0500, micky
wrote:


What's a typical file name? I want to see if I have these files.

The solitaire files start with

log_201*.txt

Each of these files is done by year and month and points to a
very long path that has Solitaire mentioned in it.

Because I have deleted all of them I am not certain of the exact
form of the file names but think that it's (for example):

log_2018April*.txt

and so on for each year and month.

I started by looking for all my *.txt files in Search Everything
from voidtools.com. I refined my search when I realized that
there were thousands of those Solitaire logs.

On Wed, 2 Jan 2019 00:24:40 +0000, ? Good Guy ?
wrote:

On 01/01/2019 23:00, Kirk Bubul wrote:
Emboldened by your answer, I searched again. Turns out that all
of the 19,608 log*.txt

There is no such thing as log*.txt.

It is either *.log or *.txt.

How old are you? You must be nearing the end of your life considering
you have started clearing your mess before you die.

INCORRECT

A search of my C: drive of log*.txt shows 94 files ... all starting
with "log" and suffix of ".txt"

On Wed, 02 Jan 2019 23:04:42 +1030, Gary Dingle
wrote:

On Wed, 2 Jan 2019 00:24:40 +0000, ? Good Guy ?
wrote:

On 01/01/2019 23:00, Kirk Bubul wrote:
Emboldened by your answer, I searched again. Turns out that all
of the 19,608 log*.txt

There is no such thing as log*.txt.

It is either *.log or *.txt.

How old are you? You must be nearing the end of your life considering
you have started clearing your mess before you die.

INCORRECT

A search of my C: drive of log*.txt shows 94 files ... all starting
with "log" and suffix of ".txt"

After my clearing out of all the Solitaire log*.txt files,
asking Everything Search to find all the log*.txt files leaves me
with 409 such files, almost all of which are left by
HP\TAInstaller, whatever that is.

I have 2,474 *.log files

I plonked Good Guy a long time ago. I didn't see his dig.

On 2019-01-01 19:24, 😉 Good Guy 😉 wrote:
On 01/01/2019 23:00, Kirk Bubul wrote:
Emboldened by your answer, I searched again. Turns out that all
of the 19,608 log*.txt

There is no such thing as log*.txt.

False. I currently show 219 files starting with 'log' and ending with
'.txt' on this Windows 10 system.


It is either *.log or *.txt.

You really should perform a search of your boot volume prior to making
such claims.


How old are you?Â* You must be nearing the end of your life considering
you have started clearing your mess before you die.

Most interesting. I have now revised my opinion. You're not an idiot, or
at least not merely an idiot. You're a troll.




--
With over 950 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

Make that an idiot fanboi troll.

On 1/1/2019 4:37 PM, Zaidy036 wrote:
On 1/1/2019 3:34 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Big Al wrote:

On 1/1/19 3:13 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Kirk Bubul wrote:

I have a 4 YO HP desktop that has just had a reinstall over the
old version of Windows 10 Pro that kept personal files and apps.
It has never had a clean install since new.

I lost a .txt file on my desktop and went looking for it.Â* When I
ran Search Everything looking for *.txtÂ* on my C: drive I was
shocked to see that I have over nineteen thousand *.txt files on
my machine.Â* Many, perhaps thousands of these files are log files
from the Windows Solitaire app that I play almost every day.
These files date back to 2014 or 2015.

Can I get rid of these files?Â* While I like keeping the record of
the history of my play in Klondike, I can live without them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

So why can't you sort the .txt files that Everything found and then
select the ones you want to delete with a date range?Â* Use Ctrl+A to
select all files or select one file and use Shift+Click on another file
to select the files within that range, and then press the Del key.Â* You
use the same key or mouse shortcuts in Everything that you use in
Windows/File Explorer.

Everything may hang (become unresponsive) when you select thousands of
files despite it using a database to record the filenames.Â* You might
want to try FileLocator Lite whose first search is slow (but subsequent
search are fast due to the caching in the first search) and selecting
thousands of files to right-click (to get the context menu to select
Del) doesn't hang it indefinitely.Â* With thousands of files to delete,
you may want to first disable the Recycle Bin; else, you will end up
moving thousands of files into the Recycle Bin instead of actually
deleting them.

You could use robocopy in a command shell to move all *.txt files
into a
temporary folder, zip up the folder (to have the .zip around in case
you
find later that you were overly aggressive in moving/deleting the
files), and then delete the temporary folder.Â* Run "robocopy /?" to see
the arguments and all the switches you can specify.

or move them to the trash.
you can then restore.

With thousands of files to delete, one of my suggestions was to
*disable* the Recycle Bin; else, every delete will actually perform a
move which takes longer to update the file table than simply marking the
first cluster as unallocated.Â* If the OP disables the Recycle Bin to
speed up the delete process, there is no "trash" to keep old copies of
the pseudo-deleted files.Â* With moving the files into the Recycle Bin,
the "delete" of 19,000 files could take hours depending on the hardware
the OP has in his computer during which the OS becomes very slow or even
unresponsive.

use "FORFILES" in a Batch file

Here is part of a batch I use:

:: Reduce C:\Windows\Temp Files and Folders
::
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
:: Remove files LAST ACCESSed OLDER than AGE
SET _SRC=C:\Windows\Temp & SET AGE=120
FORFILES /P %_SRC% /S /C "CMD /C DEL /Q @path" /D -%AGE% NUL 2&1

:: Remove empty folders
FOR /f "delims=" %%i in ('DIR %_SRC% /AD /S /B ^| SORT /R') DO RD "%%i"
NUL 2&1

--
Zaidy036