SET3.tmp and SET7.tmp

Hello all!

I have these two *.tmp files in my windows folder. They are created/updated in parallel (the same time stamp). I believe that Windows itself creates/updates these files and the former has grown to MB size.

I´m always reluctant to delete *.tmp files that aren´t in a "temp" subfolder so, is there someone out there who knows what the purpose of these *.tmp files is and if they can be safely deleted?

Thanks for Your time,
Christer

 

Hi Jim,
thanks for Your replies!

Well, that would never happen since I´ve disabled System Restore which according to my experience doesn´t work under all circumstances.

Well, that would (hopefully - touch wood) never happen since I´ve substituted Norton Ghost for System Restore. I always have an up-to-date Image of my system partition ...... ......

Thanks for Your research into my question ...... ...... the strange thing is that the date of both these files is 2001-09-28 14:00 which means that the installer put old tmp files on the system ...... ...... I installed XP in june this year.

This second check of the date prompts a correction to my initial post. I misread the date as 2003, not 2001. The file hasn´t grown since it was put there by the installer.

Maybe I´ll check the MS KB to see what they say about them, if anything at all.

Christer

 

Hi Abraxas!

I don´t know what You mean by "no temp folders in Windows ".
I´ve got one temp folder in the windows root and several in subfolders such as WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\Temp

I´m trying to figure out what "the LastGood folder" could be in swedish ...... ......

Apart from windows\set3.tmp and windows\set7.tmp there is a third tmp file which has the exact same time stamp, 2001-09-28 14:00:00.

The file is windows\system32\config.tmp but the difference is that this file has an exact duplicate named config.nt which has the time stamp of the day I installed XP.
I checked the contents of the files in Notepad and they are clones.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a reason for putting these tmp files in there but why call them *.tmp?

...... ...... Christer ...... ......

 

Hi Christer,

Out of interest I opened the files in Notepad - mine are dated 23/08/2001 BTW. From the few instances of English in the code the words Verisign and MS Root Authority appear several times.

My best guess is that they may be digital signature files and/or logs for checking the SETup of Windows - the date stamp maybe that when the CD was pressed? My last clean install of XP was this year.

Any other views?

 

Abraxas,
I suspected that You meant tmp files and not temp folders ...... ...... but I didn´t want to "put words in Your mouth "!

If a house cleaning has been carried out, all *.tmp files will be gone.
It has also been recommended to clear other files such as *.bak and *.old but on one occasion I cleared one bak file too many and Microsoft Office quit working.
That´s why I tread carefully when deleting files ...... ......


PeteC,
You´re probably right about the "SET" files.
I didn´t look too closely in Notepad because I didn´t expect to find anything legible in there ...... ......

The "CONFIG" files seem to be some kind of help files explaining the differences between config.sys and config.nt.
All lines are REMed out except the last three:

dos=high, umb
device=%SystemRoot%\system32\himem.sys
files=40

Christer