Thousands of WPTEMP folders

[Gregg Hill]

Hello!

I was trying to help someone with a QuickBooks problem, which looked as
though it was caused by the "explorer" process taking over 400MB of memory
(512 in the system) and dropping available memory to 4MB most of the time.

I wanted to clean out the user's temp folder, but when I clicked on it, it
took over fifteen minutes to show the searching flashlight, and it never did
show the folder contents. I went to a command prompt and did a "dir"
command. There were thousands of folders starting with WPTEMPxxxxxx where
xxxxxx went from zero to at least 358000, which is where I gave up and
killed it.

I Googled and found references to problems with WordPerfect 10 and GroupWise
and using the Send To from a right-click, but this user has WordPerfect 12
and does not have GroupWise.

Any idea what would create over 350,000 WPTEMP folders?

Thank you!

Gregg Hill

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hello!

I was trying to help someone with a QuickBooks problem, which looked as
though it was caused by the "explorer" process taking over 400MB of memory
(512 in the system) and dropping available memory to 4MB most of the time.

I wanted to clean out the user's temp folder, but when I clicked on it, it
took over fifteen minutes to show the searching flashlight, and it never
did show the folder contents. I went to a command prompt and did a "dir"
command. There were thousands of folders starting with WPTEMPxxxxxx where
xxxxxx went from zero to at least 358000, which is where I gave up and
killed it.

I Googled and found references to problems with WordPerfect 10 and
GroupWise and using the Send To from a right-click, but this user has
WordPerfect 12 and does not have GroupWise.

Any idea what would create over 350,000 WPTEMP folders?

Thank you!

Gregg Hill

Your best chance of getting an answer is to post your question
in a Word Perfect newsgroup.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was 3/14/2008 12:04 AM, and on a whim, Gregg Hill
pounded out on the keyboard:

Hello!

I was trying to help someone with a QuickBooks problem, which looked as
though it was caused by the "explorer" process taking over 400MB of memory
(512 in the system) and dropping available memory to 4MB most of the time.

I wanted to clean out the user's temp folder, but when I clicked on it, it
took over fifteen minutes to show the searching flashlight, and it never did
show the folder contents. I went to a command prompt and did a "dir"
command. There were thousands of folders starting with WPTEMPxxxxxx where
xxxxxx went from zero to at least 358000, which is where I gave up and
killed it.

I Googled and found references to problems with WordPerfect 10 and GroupWise
and using the Send To from a right-click, but this user has WordPerfect 12
and does not have GroupWise.

Any idea what would create over 350,000 WPTEMP folders?

Thank you!

Gregg Hill

Hi Gregg,

It sounds like you have your answer. I've used WordPerfect since the
early DOS days, and any program creates temp files that get left behind.
Why this one in particular created so many is hard to know. Does the
computer crash often while WP is open? Do they shut down programs and
Windows properly? Create a batch file that cleans the temp folders on
startup and the issue will be a non-issue. I do it on every client
machine I configure and I have pretty happy clients. ;-)

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.

 

[Gregg Hill]

Terry,

This client was someone referred to me late yesterday afternoon. I talked to
the company owner today, and he told me that someone who just started
working for him brought in WordPerfect and installed it three days ago.
Wonderful...I hate people who pirate software. Talk about trust...I'd have
bitch-slapped that person into the next century.

I have no idea if the source files of the WP installation are infected or
otherwise corrupt, or if the person brought in a legitimate version. I will
know more on Monday.

The batch file is a good idea, but should not be necessary on a
properly-running system. On this thing, it would probably have to be
scheduled several times a day considering that the over 350,000 folders were
created in less than three days!

The other interesting thing is that this person does not have GroupWise, yet
all the Google posts mentioned it.

He will be back in the shop on Monday and will give me access to it again (I
am 30 miles away).

I am going hunt down a WP newsgroup.

Thank you for your reply!

Gregg Hill

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Dear Gregg,

I just spent two days deleting over 200,000 WPTemp folders from my
local temp directory. I am a user in a small law firm, about 100 total
users. Were you able to locate the source of this issue? I tried to find
what you found (re: Google searches referencing right click with send
to).

Were you able to find a forum that addressed this problem?

Thanks,

JPS

A Word Perfect newsgroup might be a better place to ask this question.

There is no need to spend two days deleting these folders. The following
method will take less than five minutes of your time:
- Click Start / Run / cmd {OK}
- Type the following commands:
cd /d "c:\xxx\yyy\temp"{Enter}
(replace xxx\yyy\temp with your own temp folder name)
for /d %a in (WPTemp*.*) do rd /s /q "%a"{Enter}
You must, of course, make sure that you work in the home directory
containing the WPTemp directories.