I noticed that C:UsersPCAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsExplorer is using more than 17 GB on my Windows 10 system. I expected this to be a relatively small cache folder, possibly related to thumbnails or icons, but it contains many oddly named files, including files named "--". Is this size normal, and what typically causes the folder to grow so large?
4 Answers
On a newer workstation, this folder was only about 66 MB. The thumbcache*.db and iconcache*.db files are cache files and can generally be deleted; Windows will recreate them as needed when thumbnails and icons are viewed.
The folder was about 544 MB on one system, with thumbcache_1280.db taking up roughly 206 MB. Thumbnail caches tend to be the main source of growth, especially on computers used to browse lots of photos or other image-heavy folders.
A smaller installation may have only a few dozen megabytes, such as around 31 MB. If the folder has grown into the gigabytes, clearing the thumbnail and icon cache is a reasonable cleanup step, preferably after closing applications that may be using those files.
That’s much larger than usual. Around a few dozen megabytes to several hundred megabytes can be normal, but 17 GB is an extreme outlier.
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