ROSinclair
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Duplicate .dll in system32 and i386 directories
I recently ran a utiltiy included with "System Mechanic 5" that identifies duplicate .dll files on a system. It reported that i had over 4gig of duplicate files. Many of the duplicates have one file located int the "windowss\system32" directory and the duplicate copy in the C:\i386 directory. I am reluctant to just start deleting files, but i could certainly use the extra space. Can anyone tell me if it's safe to remove the duplicates from one of these directories without totally screwing up mys sytem.
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Programmers are lazy. When someone writes a library of computer functions (a .dll), we share them as much as possible so we do not have to write our own library of functions. you can have multiple applications, windows system files as well as games, office software, etc... all sharing different dll files. If you uninstall an application and choose to erase a 'shared file' for example, then all the stuff that relied on that specific dll file will fail. Sometimes a programmer will write their software and will include a common dll file but will not install it in the system 32 folder... in that case you may find duplicate dll files in many different folders. It is still best to not touch anything that ends with dll.