Beware of zero-length files

Many system clean-up programs (including the commercial CleanSweep) recommend to delete files with length = 0 to clean up your Windows 95.

Be aware, that such files are used for various purposes:

• MS installation program
• Netscape Navigorator mail
• Other programs

MS Installation program

MS installation programs create a file named MS_create. Probably it is used by the uninstall-program to delete the directory when it became empty. IMHO it is safe to delete these items.

Netscape Navigator

Netscape Navigator (at least up to version 4.x) uses files of length zero in the mail folder to indicate, that for this file name a subdirectory (*.sbd) exists. For example, the files abc with length 0 indicates, that a subfolder DDD.sbd with the mail data exists.

When deleting such a file, you loose the access to the subfolder!

D:\Mail\abc.sbd
D:\Mail\abc
D:\Mail\abc.snm
D:\Mail\Drafts
D:\Drafts.snm
D:\Mail\Inbox
D:\Mail\Inbox.snm

But Netscape Navigator may have other zero-length files without a file extension, which do not serve this purpose!

Other programs

Other programs may use zero-length files for special purpose too. In the windows directory, for example, you may find ini files of length zero and other stuff:

M_DEV32.UNM
NDISLOG.TXT
odbcddp.ini
PKZIPW.INI
RIPADMIN.INI
ROBOHTML.INI
SPEEDO.INI
SUPERVIEW.INI
Twunk003.MTX
WIN386.SWP
WOCTOGO.INI
WS_FTP.CNV

IMHO it is safe to delete these files, because they are just place holders from the installation and not filled with useful content. I have also deleted win386.swp with no problem during the last 2 years...

If in doubt, you may wish to rename such strange files to !_WIN386.SWP or !_Twunk003.MTX and watch the effect for a while before deleting them.

See also my remark on how to comment such things in a directory with a special text file.