They are the files downloaded by your webbrowser stored temporarily to your computer.
Here's a detailed explanation of temporary files in general:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_file
Basically, when you visit a website, such as this one, every component of the webpage consists of a file... for example, this site uses a webpage which consists of cookies and several image files which make up the actual page that you see. Everytime you access a website, your computer downloads all those files and stores it in a temporary location on your computer. This is how sometimes a website will load faster the second and subsequent times you visit the site... because the files have mostly been downloaded already, and those "CACHED" versions will be reused to display the webpage.
Hopefully this makes sense... Basically, no matter what, you will have temporary internet files any time you visit a webpage, no matter what browser you use. In fact, most computer programs generate temporary files of some sort. It's just a way of using your computer's hard drive to save computer memory... without temporary files, everything would need to be constantly loaded in your computer's memory.
You can cleanup temporary files by using CCleaner.
http://www.ccleaner.com
2006-12-12 16:21:08
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answer #1
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answered by WolfpacKmars2 2
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Temporary Internet Files are, in fact, the cache of the Internet Explorer. This means that when you load a web page with Internet Explorer, it is saved on your computer so that if you later decide to open the same page again, it will open a lot faster. Temporary Internet Files improve speed of web browsing and also make possible so called offline browsing, which gives you the ability to open the web pages from cache even when you are not connected to the Internet. Despite all these positive things about Temporary Internet Files, they have one big drawback: they compromise your privacy. Everyone with access to your computer can look into your Temporary Internet Files folder and see the sites that you have visited in the past. You can manually delete the contents of Temporary Internet Files folder but this will not erase all traces of the pages because a special file called Index.dat is placed in this folder and it will still preserve the names and even the dates of your first visits to many pages.
And The location of the Temporary Internet Files folder depends on the version of Windows and whether or not you are using user profiles If you have Windows XP or Windows 2000 then Temporary Internet Files are in this location (note that on your PC they can be on other drive instead of drive C): If you have only one user account on Windows XP or Windows 2000 then replace with Administrator to get the path of the Temporary Internet Files folder.
If you have Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows NT or Windows 95 then index.dat files are in these locations:Note that on your computer the Windows directory may not be C:\Windows but some other directory. If you don't have Profiles directory in you Windows directory don't worry - this just means that you are not using user profiles
2006-12-12 16:31:48
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answer #2
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answered by Anonymous
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Temporary Internet Files, also known as the Browser cache are files that are stored on your computer by an Internet browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape. The purpose of these files is to speed up the loading of websites that you visit frequently by keeping copies of the web pages and graphics on your computer.
Let's say for example you visit Yahoo.com often. Instead of having to download the pages from the server each time the browser looks in your Temporary Internet Files and finds the graphics and web page files for Yahoo.com and loads them from your hard drive which is faster than loading from the server each time. Lets look at how to access the settings for your Temporary Internet Files in Internet Explorer.
2006-12-12 16:24:53
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answer #3
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answered by ktforu 2
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As you know, whenever you visit a Web Site via the Internet, a running record of visited sites are stored in various directories on your computer. The whole purpose of storing this information is to allow a faster loading of web pages if you re-visit a particular site again. This can be a useful feature, but these temporary files can cause problems if they accumulate over a long period of time. Also whenever you install programs on your computer, residuals of the programs installation files are also stored within a Temporary File Folder and can also accumulate over a long period of time.
2006-12-12 16:23:14
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answer #4
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answered by G 7
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There is a Folder called "Temporary Internet Files" in your hard drive. When u open a web page, the respective images, cookies, scirt files, swf movies etc will temporary stored in this particular folder. If u surf internet a lot the folder size will increase in size, so better to delete the contents once a week.
2006-12-12 16:22:08
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answer #5
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answered by Anonymous
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For the most part they are files of the website or downloads that you have vivited or made. If you should go back to one of those particular sites, you computer won't have to download all the info again. It can just recall it from the temporary internet files.
2006-12-12 16:23:29
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answer #6
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answered by Anonymous
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Temporary internet files is what Internet Explorer uses as internet cache. Internet cache is used to speed up browsing commonly visited web sites by keeping copies of the web pages and graphics that you see on a web site. Keep in mind, this only improves speeds slightly and only sites that you revisit. With these days of broadband and fast internet speeds, internet cache is becoming less necessary.
It is okay to decrease your cache size or delete these files frequently.
2006-12-12 16:23:52
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answer #7
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answered by techman2000 6
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Yes! temporary internet files are those which is temporarily stored on your system while browsing sites, ex. like images, flash files *.js, *.wav, *xml doc. 'coz site upload these files to ur system then runs it. But why temporary? 'coz these files updates itself on updation of website and replaced by new image or files. These files help in increasing speed of ur internet, because when browser asks any file which is in your temporary folder(in previous surfing) and if the same file on the site, then browser doesn't download it, then it uses the temporary folder file. which respond into increase speed n performance of net.
2006-12-12 16:29:20
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answer #8
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answered by iMaXX 4
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Most temp files are files that are parts of web pages. If you return to a web page, you don't have to re-load those files each time, so your page loads faster. However, if you get enough of them on your drive, your computer has to search to find the right ones it needs, so ultimately the time spent searching outweighs the time saved by not downloading - at which point, it's time to clean them out.
2006-12-12 16:27:41
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answer #9
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answered by Anonymous
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Everytime you surf the web, the internet pages download "files to your computer. This came into use when people had slow modems. With the files downloaded to your computer, they did not have to be redownloaded every time you went to the webpage, thereby speeding up the internet.
THey can ALWAYS be deleted safely. They can add up rather quickly and shouldbe deleted ofteb.
2006-12-12 16:21:42
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answer #10
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answered by Anonymous
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