Is it ok to delete setup log files and debug dump files in Disk Cleanup

As I am a retired senior, I use my computer for basic items only. I have a Dell Dimension 4100 Desktop computer with 930 MHz Pentium III processor, 20 GB hard Drive and 512 MB Ram. Windows XP – Home edition Service Pack 3 is sunning in my system. I have seen Log files of size 2537 kb and dump files of size 283kb Disk Cleanup window. As these files are created by windows, I have a doubt whether to remove them or not. So I wanted to confirm whether it is fine if I delete those files. What are they actually? Help will be appreciated.

"Debug dump files" are usually the copies of the contents of your computer's memory.Normally when any program or an application crashes, it will “dump” some or all of the contents stored in RAM to a file on your hard disk. These files are used by the technical support people to find the reason why the particular program or application crashed. It contains some information and error codes regarding the cause for the failure. It is fine to delete them through system clean up and does not cause any harm or damage to the system.

The “Setup log files” are created at the time of program installation. They "log" a program's installation. On opening them you will find that they give a step-by-step description of how the program was installed in your system. If a program did not install properly, the setup log helps us to know what went wrong during installation. If the installation was done smoothly then you can feel free to get rid of those Setup Log files from your system. It depends on the program that created the log files.

It is noticed that the log files are often used to uninstall the program. Deleting the entire “Setup log files” can sometime affect few programs when we try to uninstall them. Usually “Cannot find install.log” or “Cannot find setup.log” error is thrown if the log files are missing during uninstallation. As they take very less space of your hard disk, I would recommend you to keep them. They can be helpful while debugging or fixing the problem. To be on the safer side you should take back ups of files in some CD or your flash drive so that you can use them if any problem arises in future.

Thank you everyone for removing some time from your life to help me and give quick and genuine replies. They really helped and gave me the general overview about the ‘Debug dump files’ and the ’Setup log files’. I also wanted to clarify this small doubt of mine. I have approximately 5GB of free space left on my "C" hard drive. So is this much space sufficient for someone like me who uses computer for basic purpose or should I have some more space in my C drive?

There is no particular standard on how much space is enough for your C drive or any other drive. Normally it is recommended that 15% of your actual disk space should be unoccupied so that it is possible for Windows built-in defragmenter to work. Beyond that, it always depends on what the user actually want. As you said that you use your computer only for basic purpose, I feel that 5GB of free space is more than enough for you.

Yes it is safe to wipe out system dump files in Windows. This files consist of stop error which is recorded when some applications fails to perform or when system stops working. This errors are recorded and stored in your system so that any support technician in Microsoft can help you to fix the issue. This are just reference file which can be deleted as you want. Try to clean the files after regular interval of time.

It is ok to delete the files. You can wipe that out without worrying. Those files are just plain text files which keep track of erro as mentioned. There are tools like CCleaner which scans your system for unused file and wipe them out. It also fix the registry errors if any. So you can try a advance tools to check the unused system files and wipe them as and when needed. I use a automatic service for that.