Should I manually delete temp files?

I'm running out of space on my C: drive, so I did some digging and found this:

C:/windows/system32/config/systemprofile/local settings/temp

There's about 1.15 GB of *.tmp files sitting there. Can I just delete them manually? I can't get CCleaner installed because of some malware issue.

I'm running Windows XP.

Tried installing Norton free, but it needs 2GB just to run the installer, so that was a dead end. I've got some old offline installers for AVG and Avira lying around, but I doubt they'll do much—everything seems mostly stable for now anyway.

Cheers.

Yeah, during the install, it explicitly told me I needed two gigs of free space on my hard drive—you should've seen the look on my face when I read that. I tried running it again after unchecking a few options, but it just kept saying the same thing. Might be a bug, honestly. I'm not sure.

Man, you seriously need way more breathing room for that quarantine folder. Honestly, just run CCleaner through—but pro tip, install it while you're in Safe Mode first. Or better yet, just grab the portable version so you don't even have to deal with an installation process.

You could also give the portable version of BleachBit a shot; it’s basically the same deal as CCleaner.

Running CCleaner portable—left everything checked at the defaults. It wiped 170MB, but that 1.15GB? Still sitting there. Oh well, at least it gave me a good laugh.

So you're actually looking for some kind of system cleanup program?

Not sure what you mean by that. 🤔
I don't want to look like a complete idiot here, but if you're talking about Disk Cleanup, it didn't clear out those temp files either.

BleachBit shows 12MB ready to go in the system category during the preview.
No clue where that number comes from—CCleaner only sees 100KB, and Disk Cleanup sees even less.

Might sound a little crazy, but just grab the free version of Defrag. Go into the program options, hit the disk cleanup section, and check every single box they give you. Then just run the Defrag.
You can even find a portable version if you don't want to deal with a full install.

The Microsoft portable version doesn't have a cleanup option—I've looked everywhere, but nothing. It’s not a huge deal yet, though.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. 👍