Introduction to common data caching in Windows systems

What is a cache? sounds like a very technical fan, in fact, the user commonly used some "files" or other types of data to temporary storage to a place, the next time you need to use it can be read and used. This allows Windows to get cached data from a fixed location without having to retrieve it from the original file or network to speed up the response. Because cached files are temporary storage that is not permanent, cached data locations in Windows are mostly hidden.

For most Windows PC users, caching is important because it can greatly improve system performance. But the disadvantage is that it will occupy a certain amount of disk space, if you are seriously insufficient disk space, you can consider periodically clear some "cached data" to free up disk space.

　　1. Windows Update Cache file

Cached data non-Windows Update cache files that occupy the maximum amount of disk space in the Windows operating system. By default, all update files for Windows Update are cached, causing users to waste large amounts of disk space while they are constantly updating Windows.

For example: I have a machine that updates to Windows version 1511 via WINDWOS update to only update cache files up to 24GB.

Although these update cache files are not automatically cleaned, we can safely perform manual cleanup. All we need to do is to remove all cached data from Windows Update in the following folder when we close the Windows Update Service:

C:windowssoftwaredistributiondownload

　2.Windows Application Store cache file

The Windows App Store is a feature that Microsoft has launched to compete with the big vendors ' App Store, but many users don't like the "fake apps". As you may have guessed, Windows automatically caches content that is downloaded through the Windows App Store. This not only takes up disk space, it can also cause inexplicable problems. These cached files are most likely to cause problems when users interrupt the Windows store download or stop downloading incorrectly.

When users do not use the Windows store or their problems, we can try to use the WSReset.exe tool provided by Microsoft to clean up the cache. When we execute the WSReset.exe command directly in "Run", the operation is only done in the background, and you can only see a black window. When the execution completes, the Windows store automatically exits to indicate that the cleanup is complete.

　　3. Temporary file caching

Windows also has a temporary file directory similar to Linux. In the temporary file directory, various applications can throw intermediate data or temporary files that it produces to cache. Unfortunately, many ISVs develop applications that have no hand in their hands, and do not deal with the temporary files produced by their applications well. For a long time, this can cause a lot of unnecessary junk data to be stored in the Windows temp file directory.

Of course, we can use the Disk Cleanup tool to clear the temporary file cache data.

　4. Thumbnail cache data

The picture and video preview feature in Windows stores the supported video and picture file information through the thumbnail cache for quick display of video and picture previews. If you have a large number of pictures and videos, you may also have a huge thumbnail cache. We can also use the Disk Cleanup tool to thumbnail caching when necessary, such as if the preview is not refreshed, so that Windows refreshes the preview diagram.

You can also manually rebuild the Windows 10 icon and picture cache through our previous articles.

　　5. Browser caching

When you use a browser to access a Web page, files from many Web sites, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and pictures, are cached locally to speed up our access to the site again. When used in a long time browser, a large number of cached files are accumulated. Suggest that you can according to their own situation and needs, regularly to clean up the browser cache.

Because everyone uses different browsers, so this has to go to the browser options to find, clean up the Microsoft Edge browser method you can refer to here.

　　6. DNS Cache

When we want to access a Web site or resolve a domain name in Windows, we need to use a DNS server to help us convert domain names to IP addresses. In this article, we do not introduce the recursive and iterative query process for DNS, just as you know: Windows caches DNS resolution results to the local computer.

DNS caching helps users get faster access to the IP of a common web site, but sometimes it can be counterproductive. For example: A Web site in the public network DNS changed the IP address, and the user's local DNS cache has not expired, it will access the wrong IP address.

If you encounter similar problems, you can force a manual flush of the DNS cache by using the following command:

Ipconfig/flushdns

　　Summary

OK, here are some of the "cached data" points that are commonly used in Windows. Of course, can also count out the "windows Search index" System Restore point "and so can be accounted for space cache files, here is not introduced.