dll Files Taking Up A Lot of Space In OneDrive

amsuco · Mar 24, 2024

My OneDrive is full again, and I'm trying to clear out some space. I'm seeing a lot of dll files in particular, taking up space that have dates going back 5 years or more. That has me wondering if any of these could be safely removed, and if so, just how I should go about it. The searches I've done so far haven't come up with much. If I'm going about this the wrong way, feel free to clue me in. I'd prefer to only be backing up stuff that I really need, and clearing out the clutter every once in a while. Pictures and documents that are still important are easy for me to identify. Files like this are not. Thanks!

glasskuter · Mar 24, 2024

I'm trying to figure out why there are .dll files at all in onedrive. There should be no .dll files in documents and pictures. Exactly what folders are you syncing to onedrive.

Berton · Mar 24, 2024

Agree with @glasskuter, most all .dll [Dynamic Link Library] files are in the C:\Windows folder or its sub-folders, put there by Windows and Windows-based program installations and usually not backed up in OneDrive.

What exactly are DLL files, and how do they work?

How exactly do DLL files work? There seems to be an awful lot of them, but I don't know what they are or how they work. So, what's the deal with them?

stackoverflow.com

amsuco · Mar 26, 2024

It sounds like not only should I be able to remove just the older dll files, but all of them. I didn't expect that.

glasskuter said:
Exactly what folders are you syncing to onedrive.

If I'm understanding you correctly, when I look under My files in OneDrive, I'm seeing folders for Attachments, Desktop, Documents, Personal Vault, Pictures, and Public. Do any of those stand out as being the source of my problem? I don't know that it makes a difference, but some of the dates on those dll files carry over from before I started using this particular computer. I can't rule out that these files, and this issue, predates anything I'm doing currently.

Hold everything. I just got a message saying that I was switching OneDrive accounts, so apparently I have more than one for some reason. I'm going to have to check that out.