cccosavaryn
asked on
'contacts.edb' Files Are Proliferating on My Computer
I've been noticing that the amount of free space on my C: drive has gradually been decreasing over the past few months. In fact, it seems that over 500 MB of free space has disappeared over the past four months.
To find out what's going on, I searched the C: drive (with FileLocator Pro, which is a superb file search tool, I think). I set the search criterion to files larger than 2 MB in size. The search results identified a slew of files (106 to be exact) all bearing the same name, contacts.edb, but each in a separate, unique folder. The folder paths to these contacts.edb files all had a similar format:
C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{hhhhhhhh-hhhh-hh
or
C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{hhhhhhhh-hhhh-hh
... where (username) is a user account name, such as Linda; and {hhhhhhhh-hhhh-hhhh-hhhh-h
These files varied in size from 3 MB to 7 MB. The total space consumed by the 106 contacts.edb on the C: drive is approximately 604,208 KB.
The creation dates of these (contacts.edb) files range from 3/31/2009 to today, 8/1/2009.
Bingo: that's where the unused space on the C: drive has been going.
Questions
--------------
(Each is worth 75 points)
1. I suspect that these contacts.edb files contain the contact information that's in the user's Windows Live Mail account saved on the local c: drive, but why are there so many of them?
2. Is it safe to get rid of the older contacts.edb files?
3. What's the safe and intended method of deleting the older contacts.edb files?
4. Is there a setting in Live Mail that would cause it to automatically delete the hexadecimal-named folders which contain a contacts.edb file older than, say, one week or two weeks?
Thanks in advance.
To find out what's going on, I searched the C: drive (with FileLocator Pro, which is a superb file search tool, I think). I set the search criterion to files larger than 2 MB in size. The search results identified a slew of files (106 to be exact) all bearing the same name, contacts.edb, but each in a separate, unique folder. The folder paths to these contacts.edb files all had a similar format:
C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{hhhhhhhh-hhhh-hh
or
C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{hhhhhhhh-hhhh-hh
... where (username) is a user account name, such as Linda; and {hhhhhhhh-hhhh-hhhh-hhhh-h
These files varied in size from 3 MB to 7 MB. The total space consumed by the 106 contacts.edb on the C: drive is approximately 604,208 KB.
The creation dates of these (contacts.edb) files range from 3/31/2009 to today, 8/1/2009.
Bingo: that's where the unused space on the C: drive has been going.
Questions
--------------
(Each is worth 75 points)
1. I suspect that these contacts.edb files contain the contact information that's in the user's Windows Live Mail account saved on the local c: drive, but why are there so many of them?
2. Is it safe to get rid of the older contacts.edb files?
3. What's the safe and intended method of deleting the older contacts.edb files?
4. Is there a setting in Live Mail that would cause it to automatically delete the hexadecimal-named folders which contain a contacts.edb file older than, say, one week or two weeks?
Thanks in advance.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Sorry, had to be gone most of the day... I have 6 of those folders on my computer, and each is empty. I really haven't used Windows Live Messenger yet to try and contact anybody, so I don't know if there are supposed to be .edb files in there or not.
ASKER
LeeTutor,
Since I rarely use the Messenger program, I decided to remove it, but when I looked for it in the Add or Remove Programs list, it wasn't there. On the web I found instructions about running the following command string from the Run box that quicly removed Messenger:
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSecti
http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/tune-05.html
"Uninstall Windows Messenger"
Then, under each user profile folder, I deleted the entire Windows Live Contacts folders. This freed nearly a Gigabyte of space on the hard drive...yahoo.
At this point my questions 2, 3, and 4 are moot. I did not learn of a "safe" way to delete those 107 older [Guid] folders each of which held a single contacts.edb. I did try to see if the Nir Sofer utility program LiveContactsView could do that; strangely, however, when I browsed with LiveContactsView to the [Guid] folders other than the most recent one, the LiveContactsView program could not "see" the contacts.edb file in any of them despite the fact that Windows Explorer could "see" it. I could, however drag the contacts.edb file from the Windows Explorer list into the LiveContactsView program and open the contacts.edb file that way. Another strange detail about these contacts.ebd files was that they each displayed only three messenger contacts, yet their size was approximately 6 MB!
WIth that, I will close this issue.
Thanks for your assistance.
Since I rarely use the Messenger program, I decided to remove it, but when I looked for it in the Add or Remove Programs list, it wasn't there. On the web I found instructions about running the following command string from the Run box that quicly removed Messenger:
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSecti
http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/tune-05.html
"Uninstall Windows Messenger"
Then, under each user profile folder, I deleted the entire Windows Live Contacts folders. This freed nearly a Gigabyte of space on the hard drive...yahoo.
At this point my questions 2, 3, and 4 are moot. I did not learn of a "safe" way to delete those 107 older [Guid] folders each of which held a single contacts.edb. I did try to see if the Nir Sofer utility program LiveContactsView could do that; strangely, however, when I browsed with LiveContactsView to the [Guid] folders other than the most recent one, the LiveContactsView program could not "see" the contacts.edb file in any of them despite the fact that Windows Explorer could "see" it. I could, however drag the contacts.edb file from the Windows Explorer list into the LiveContactsView program and open the contacts.edb file that way. Another strange detail about these contacts.ebd files was that they each displayed only three messenger contacts, yet their size was approximately 6 MB!
WIth that, I will close this issue.
Thanks for your assistance.
ASKER
Thanks for your good response with the link to the helpfull article by Nir Sofer about the utility LiveContactsView.
It confirms where I found the contacts.edb files on my Windows XP system. Each contacts.edb file is located in a separate folder that matches the following folder path template, as the article indicates, namely, [Profile Folder]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\[Guid]\DBStore.
So, I am confused by your statement
>> I expect that there is something wrong in the system files or in the registry used by WL Messenger that is causing the contacts to be scattered all over the place rather than in a single folder. You might try uninstalling and reinstalling Windows Live Messenger to see if the problem is corrected.
Maybe the problem is that there are 108 such folders on my Windows XP system for 108 different contacts.edb files. In other words, there should be just one GUID folder containing the contacts.edb file.