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
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.