Moving temp file directory from drive C: to drive D:

[HKPhooey]

Hi,

How can I move the UltraEdit temp file directory from drive C: to drive D:? My C: is running out of space hence I can't open big files.

Pls help, thanks in advance!!

[Mofi]

First you should use the Windows Disk Cleanup Tool (German: Datenträgerbereinigung). There is an excellent article about Keeping Windows XP Systems Clean. There is also an article with the title Description of the Disk Cleanup Tool in Windows XP on the support website of Microsoft. But run this tool only when you are sure that all install / uninstall operations have finished. If your Windows is running already for a long time without a start for example when using hibernate instead of Windows shutdown, restart Windows before making any clean up.

You can start the tool via Start - (All) Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Cleanup. Confirm drive C and wait until the tool has scanned drive C for old files (not accessed files in last x months) which maybe can be ZIP compressed by Windows to get drive space back. This can take a few minutes depending how many files you have on drive C if it is a NTFS drive.

After the cleanup tool shows its dialog and you use WinXP and your current Windows is stable, first switch to tab More Options and click on the button Clean Up in the third part named System Restore.

That will delete all system restore point files except the last one which normally brings you back a few hundred MBs or even GBs - depends on how many space you have reserved for the system restore at Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - System Restore - Settings. There is no hourglass mouse pointer when Windows runs the file deletion, you must look on the drive activity led to see when the process has finished or click on the first tab in the window to get the hourglass mouse pointer while this special clean up is in process.

Next switch back to tab Disk Cleanup. There you should check the options

• Temporary Internet Files - thousands of files, always good to delete it regularly - the reserved disk space for temporary internet files can be also adjusted in the Internet Options of IE although I think the limitation is not really working.
• Recyle Bin - the reserved disk space can be also adjusted - see properties of the recyle bin on desktop shortcut.
• Temporary Files

If your drive C is a NTFS drive, you can also check the option to compress the "old" (= not accessed files in last x months) files.

Next click on button OK to execute the cleanup and close the tool.

Because "Temporary Internet Files", "Recyle Bin" and "Temporary Files" are by default user specific, all users on the computer should run the tool once per month.

It's also a good idea to additionally manually delete all files and subdirectories in C:\Windows\Temp (exactly %windir%\temp). The temp files currently in use cannot be deleted, simply ignore them and delete all other. And Windows XP users should delete also once per month (best after the automatical Windows security updates are executed and Windows has restarted) the files in C:\Windows\Prefetch.

After the deletion of all the temp files, it is a good idea to run the defragmentation tool of Windows. You should close all applications before running Start - (All) Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Defragmenter.

Special hint for starting Windows Disk Cleanup Tool much faster. If you are 100% sure you will never compress old files on your NTFS drives, you can decrease the startup time of the Disk Cleanup Tool dramatically, if you do following:

• Open a new ASCII file in UltraEdit.
• Copy and paste following lines into this new file.
  
  REGEDIT4
  
  [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Compress Old Files]
  
  
• Save the file anywhere with any name, but with extension .reg, for example RemoveCompressOldFilesFeature.reg.
• Double click on this registry file to run regedit which will ask if you really want to import this file into your registry. Confirm it with OK.
• Regedit will now delete that key from your Windows registry. Important: You need administrator privileges to do that.
• Delete the registry file, you don't need it anymore.

Now the Disk Cleanup Tool starts MUCH faster because the option for compressing old files does not exist anymore and so it must not scan whole drive which files have not been accessed for a very long time.

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After this short instructions how to get the system drive clean, back to your initial question. UltraEdit uses like most other programs the directory specified by the environment variable TEMP as temp directory. If you want to move the temp directory for UltraEdit and all other programs to a different drive, you have to open Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Advanced - button Environment Variables.

Hint: Start - Settings - Control Panel - System can be fast opened by pressing the WINDOWS key, hold it and press additionally the key BREAK.

If you look carefully you will find entries named TEMP and TMP at the upper field. These 2 variables specify the temp directory for YOU, the current user. You can delete it (not recommended when more than 1 user uses this computer at the same time as you) or change/edit its value to a different directory.

In the bottom field there are also environment variables named TEMP and TMP. These variables are used, if you delete the user specific TEMP and TMP variables and they are used for applications and services running with the SYSTEM account for example before a user has logged on. You can change the values of the system TEMP and TMP variables too, but never delete it.

After changing the environment variables, you have to restart your Windows. You should also write down the paths before you change it, because after restart of Windows you should delete the old temp directory completely because it is not used anymore.

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If you don't want to change the standard temporary folders of Windows and you just want to use a different folder for temporary files when using UltraEdit you should read in help of UltraEdit the page titled INI File Selection and Advanced Settings. There you can read that it is possible to specify a directory for temp files by manually adding to uedit32.ini following:

[Settings]
Temp File Dir=D:\Temp

Important: Don't use double quotes and don't specify a trailing backslash. The environment variable TEMP holds the path to the temp folder also without double quotes and without a \ at the end.

Well, exactly this help page about the location of the INI of UltraEdit-32 and UEStudio and the advanced settings not available via the configuration dialog or a context menu must be completely updated - UltraEdit-16 is history, UEStudio INI file and environment variable name is missing, many of the existing advanced settings can be modified now in one of the configuration dialogs, and some really new advanced settings ("secret" developer settings) are missing. Troy from IDM support has promised me to do that till next major release.

The update of the referred help page has been done by Troy for UE v13.00 and UEStudio v6.20.