Just read about an article from InspectMyGadget on keeping your PC clean by removing empty directories. I thought to myself, I definitely don’t leave empty folders lying around my computer. I create directory when I need them and delete them whenever it’s empty. This is to prevent my system from being too messy.

Later on, I didn’t have anything to do. So I decided to download the free tool called Remove Empty Directories suggested by InspectMyGadget. Setup file is only 652KB. Installed RED and ran it. I clicked on the “Scan folders” button, waited for a few minutes and to my surprise RED found more than 500 empty directories in my system! I can easily remove all 500 empty folders by clicking the “Delete folders” button.

Remove Empty Directories (RED) searches and deletes empty directories recursively below a given start folder and shows the result in a well arranged tree. Further you can create some custom rules for keeping and deleting folders. Empty files in directories can also be ignored. Just try RED to see the other features – no registry keys or system files will be touched.

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is required to run RED. The installer should check if you have installed the .NET Framework 2.0 and will install it if not. So you don’t really need to worry much about the requires to run RED.

When I got to know about this tool, I immediately thought about the problems that I might encounter if an empty folder is wrongly deleted. Some softwares that are not smart enough may give errors when a folder that it requires is not there. Some wouldn’t have problems because it has the ability to recreate the required folder. If you’re afraid of the possibility that some applications could stop working if such a temporary folder gets deleted, you can configure RED to not scan folders in Program Files, Windows and User and Documents and Settings.

Just use it wisely and don’t simply delete empty folders if you’re not an advanced computer user. As for me, I dare to delete all of the empty folders found in my computer because I am curious to know which softwares is not smart enough to recreate required folders by itself.

So far Microsoft Excel won’t run after deleting ALL empty folders from my system. Repairing wouldn’t fix it and I have to uninstall and reinstall the whole Microsoft Office.

[ Download Remove Empty Directories v2.1 ]

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