WCTxxxx.tmp files in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp


eulenfalter

Well-known member
Local time
5:41 AM
Posts
22
OS
Windows 11 Pro ARM64 (Apple Silicon M1/Parallels)
Hello,

there are >2GB of WCTxxxx.tmp in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp ; Win 11 Pro (ARM), up-to-date release version (no beta).
Renaming to .exe reveals they seem to be old OneDrive updates.
They are not being deleted when performing temp cleanup via windows settings.
1. Does everybody have these files, provided you are using OneDrive?
2. Is it correct that this can be considered App mishavior of a MS app - not cleaning up old update exes, and accumating them to the GB level?
3. Is it correct that they can safely be deleted, especially older ones?

Thank you.
 

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Windows 11 Pro ARM64 (Apple Silicon M1/Parall...M1 Apple Silicon5 GB VM / 16 GB Host (MacOS)
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Windows 11 Pro ARM64 (Apple Silicon M1/Parallels)
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Apple
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M1 Apple Silicon
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5 GB VM / 16 GB Host (MacOS)
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They should be safe to delete. You might want to copy them to another location first, just in case. Once everything is deemed working fine without those files, delete your backup copy. Personally, I would simply whack them.

I had a problem in the original Win 11 release where my logon time would slowly start to take longer and longer, and I finally isolated it to something that happens when I have large numbers of folders / files in %temp%. However, I know that issue is resolved in 22H2 and I believe was also fixed with a Patch Tuesday update for the original release (the slow logon issue that is - I still get huge numbers of files in that folder). As a result of that issue I used to delete the contents of %Temp% about once a week and never ever saw any issues whatsoever. There would always be like 10 files that could not be deleted as they were reported as being in use, so those files I simply left alone.

Currently, I have 28 of the files that you reference but all 28 only add up to 1.34 MB.
 

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Thank you very much for your kindly-written reply.

In my case, there are dozens of files that are all around 50 MB -- all installation files, renamed to tmp. But there are also more wct.... files of smaller sizes (considerably smaller).
 

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Windows 11 Pro ARM64 (Apple Silicon M1/Parall...M1 Apple Silicon5 GB VM / 16 GB Host (MacOS)
OS
Windows 11 Pro ARM64 (Apple Silicon M1/Parallels)
Computer type
Laptop
Manufacturer/Model
Apple
CPU
M1 Apple Silicon
Memory
5 GB VM / 16 GB Host (MacOS)
Monitor(s) Displays
13.3" retina
Hard Drives
1 TB SSD
Mouse
touchpad (internal)

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