Location of temp files

[Lee Johnson]

Gang,
We have a DesignJet 5000 and have been trying to do a large plot on it. It
fails on the computer generating the plot saying that there is not enough
hard drive space, and it was right, that drive was running low. My
question is how do I redirect the temporary files being created during the
plot process? Is it a system environmental variable or what?

Thanks
Lee Johnson
hol...@bellsouth.net

[Ben Myers]

Lee,

Open up a DOS window on your computer and key in the command SET . The result
is a list of all the environmental variables set by Windows, including TEMP, the
directory (or folder) where programs are supposed to place their temporary
files. For a Windows 95/98/ME system, TEMP is usually C:\WINDOWS\TEMP . For a
Windows NT family system (NT, 2000, XP), TEMP is created at login time and its
directory floats among the various users who log in and use a system, something
similar to C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\TEMP.

To see the contents of the current TEMP directory, open up a RUN command dialog
box, and enter %TEMP% . Up will pop an Explorer window showing you all the junk
files inside.

The TEMP folder, if not cleaned out, often gets filled with thousands of files
taking up megabytes of disk space. Because so many programs use the TEMP
folder, the computer becomes ever more sluggish. Why does TEMP get filled with
thousands of files? Programs are supposed to delete temporary files when they
are through with them, or when the programs terminate. In practice, very few
programs clean up after themselves, mimicing the behavior of their geek creators
in real life. The company most responsible for this never-ending clutter of
TEMP files is (who else?), you guessed it, Micro$oft, with its Office products,
IE, OE, etc. Also, HP's inkjet printer drivers leave a lot of junk behind,
failing to delete files when a document is printed. Not sure about DesignJet
drivers, but HP's LaserJet drivers are fairly well-mannered in their limited use
of temporary files.

Before attempting to change environment variables, clean up the temporary files
on the drive used by the DesignJet. Start with the Disk Cleanup built into
Windows, but it does only a half-baked job. You will probably end up manually
deleting files and folders from the TEMP directory, thereby freeing up megabytes
of disk space and speeding up the system considerably, especially if TEMP files
have not been cleaned out in a while... Ben Myers