Bug? Increasing file count in temp directory until Windows Mail fa

[Mantari]

SUMMARY: Windows Mail is creating temporary files in order to (pre)view a
message, and then is only cleaning up some of the temporary files, leaving an
ever-growing list of remnant files as more messages are read over time. That
ever-growing list is never cleaned up, and the count increases until Windows
Mail hits a failure point.

Here is what I see going on:

I used Windows Mail to view an email in the preview pane. It creates the
following files in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Temp:

wbk6615.tmp 0k [??]
wb6616.tmp 4k [message body]
wb6627.tmp 0k [??]
wb6628.tmp 33k [embedded image in message body]

When I go to the next message inside of Windows Mail and preview that
message, the following files (from the list above, from the previous message)
are still left in that temporary directory:

wbk6615.tmp 0k [??]
wb6627.tmp 0k [??]

The amount of zero length files that are left over seems to be directly tied
to the number of embedded items in a message. There seem to be a minimum of 1
..tmp file that is left over for each message, even if the message has no
embedded images (including webbugs). The number increases proportionally with
the number of embedded images. (I haven't looked at attachments.)

This number appears to grow and grow over time, until the number reaches >
~65535, in which Windows Mail fails.

See threads: "Cannot view downloaded emails" and "Windows Mail displays
white space instead of message body". I do not know if the ever-popular issue
of not being able to download attachments is related or not.

Going into IE8 and telling it to delete history / temporary files does not
remove the files in this directory.

This strongly appears to be an application bug to me, but I'm certainly
willing to explore with you the various reasons why it may be my fault.

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Interesting analysis, Mantari. I've never had the attachments problem,
so I checked what I have in that same directory,
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Temp.

None of the files follow the wb*.tmp naming pattern.
Only 20 files were zero byte size. Those all followed a naming convention
of CVR*.tmp.cvr.

This was on a partition running Windows 7 RC. I'm going to install Vista
on another partition to see if I can duplicate what you are seeing.
Windows Mail is an abandoned orphan under Win7, requiring a hack to
even allow it to run.