glricht
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 805
- Location
- Zephyrhills, Florida
(Long post warning!)
Ran into a weird problem today and thought I'd share it. Maybe others are aware of this, but I wasn't (until today).
Customer calls and says her PC (XP Home SP3) is running slow. Also tells me that "somebody" had told her that if her PC was slow she should open RUN and type %temp%, press Enter and delete all the temp files and that would speed things up. She opened %temp%, found 60,000+ temp files and deleted them all.
Here's where it starts to get weird.
Later, the PC still seemed sluggish, so she goes back into %temp% and thousands of new temp files have been created! So she deletes all the new ones. A while later, the scenario repeats. After a couple days of this, she calls me.
I checked the PC and other than some back-level software (e.g. Flash, Java, etc), everything looked fine. So I ran TFC and it said it had removed 155MB of temp files and a reboot was needed. Rebooted, went back to %temp% and there were only a couple of files, evidently created during the reboot.
But while I was talking with the customer and an explorer window was open to the %temp% folder, new temp files began appearing and in the span of 5 minutes there were over 1,500 of them! Almost all of them were zero-length and named along the lines of VERxxx.tmp (where 'xxx' appeared to be a hex counter).
To make a long story short, I finally diagnosed that HPQTRA08.exe was the root cause of both the temp files and the PC running slow. (HPATRA08.exe, aka HP Digital Imaging Monitor, is used with HP printers and monitors communications between the PC and the printer.)
It was running between 30-50% and after I blew it away, the temp files were no longer being created! Using Autoruns, I disabled its autostart and the PC was noticeably snappier and no more temp files! The only negative I can determine by disabling it is that a scan can no longer be initiated at the printer, it has to be done from the PC.
Discovered that a few weeks earlier the customer had installed a new HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 printer which allows USB, wired & wireless connections (she uses USB).
I've had customer PCs slowed down by HP-type printer software in the past, but the creation of 1000's of temp files is a new side-effect to me.
Hopefully this will help somebody more quickly diagnose a similar problem.
Ran into a weird problem today and thought I'd share it. Maybe others are aware of this, but I wasn't (until today).
Customer calls and says her PC (XP Home SP3) is running slow. Also tells me that "somebody" had told her that if her PC was slow she should open RUN and type %temp%, press Enter and delete all the temp files and that would speed things up. She opened %temp%, found 60,000+ temp files and deleted them all.
Here's where it starts to get weird.
Later, the PC still seemed sluggish, so she goes back into %temp% and thousands of new temp files have been created! So she deletes all the new ones. A while later, the scenario repeats. After a couple days of this, she calls me.
I checked the PC and other than some back-level software (e.g. Flash, Java, etc), everything looked fine. So I ran TFC and it said it had removed 155MB of temp files and a reboot was needed. Rebooted, went back to %temp% and there were only a couple of files, evidently created during the reboot.
But while I was talking with the customer and an explorer window was open to the %temp% folder, new temp files began appearing and in the span of 5 minutes there were over 1,500 of them! Almost all of them were zero-length and named along the lines of VERxxx.tmp (where 'xxx' appeared to be a hex counter).
To make a long story short, I finally diagnosed that HPQTRA08.exe was the root cause of both the temp files and the PC running slow. (HPATRA08.exe, aka HP Digital Imaging Monitor, is used with HP printers and monitors communications between the PC and the printer.)
It was running between 30-50% and after I blew it away, the temp files were no longer being created! Using Autoruns, I disabled its autostart and the PC was noticeably snappier and no more temp files! The only negative I can determine by disabling it is that a scan can no longer be initiated at the printer, it has to be done from the PC.
Discovered that a few weeks earlier the customer had installed a new HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 printer which allows USB, wired & wireless connections (she uses USB).
I've had customer PCs slowed down by HP-type printer software in the past, but the creation of 1000's of temp files is a new side-effect to me.
Hopefully this will help somebody more quickly diagnose a similar problem.
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