i kind of realised that it was just a matter of ticking the "delete offline content" box when you empty the temporary internet files (as described in one of Peski's links) ...like duh...considering i accumulated over a year of stuff. In the end, i managed to free up some 4.5GB of my primary drive space. I doubt this space will last long though seeing as how much of your internet activities are actually stored, including video files. I guess it's just a matter of emptying the folders regularly... I still don't know why windows saw the need to hide them though....