What should I do with temp files?

OS is WinXP Home.

How should the temporary files found at

<Root folder>\Documents & Settings\<My Name>\Local Settings\Temp

be managed?

The subfolder of this is Temporary Internet Files and these are all cookies that I'd like to retain. However, the files in the main Temp folder appear to be mainly xml's, log's, and tmp's.

Can all these in the Temp folder (other than the Internet cookies) be safely deleted by manual means, or is it best to leave them alone?

Use CCleaner. You can choose what you want to be deleted. So if you want to leave cookies alone then you just uncheck the box.

You can use the Disk Cleanup tool located in All Programs, Accessories, System Tools. This will scan your HDD for all files that can be safetly deleted, as well as compress old files to save on disk space. You'll be amazed how much disk space you can free up if you've never run this before. I've seen up to 10 GB freed up (combined total of Recycling Bin, Setup Files, and Temporary Internet Files). This doesn't delete cookies, either. It assumes that you want to save those.

I also recommend Crap Cleaner (CCLeaner)- you can DL it from majorgeeks.com (my favorite place for free software tools) et al. As another noted above, it is wise to uncheck the cookies item under each set of options. CC likes to wipe ALL cookies and lots of them really do aid in your surfing to regularly visited sites - you'll likely be unhappy if you let it wipe your cookies. Let your anti Ad/SpyWare programs take care of the few hinky cookies.

.bh.

Myke is right ! removing them with Disk Cleanup is perfectly safe