Ted, you said somewhere (and correct me if I'm wrong or misunderstood), but you said or implied that these temp files are written by the OS in some process, and that Poser is not writing them and is unaware of them being written.

That sounds reasonable and make sense. Sort of like the OS is writting out log files of all the communication.

If that is the case, it seems to me that if these files are removed while Poser is running, Poser should proceed as normal.. it doesn't know about them, doesn't use them, doesn't care. Correct?

I've noticed two things that don't make sense with that logic though:

1. If Poser is running and I delete all the files in my temporary internet folder, Poser freezes.

2. I mentioned that I had moved my temporary internet folder initially to a small removable SD card and reserved only about 10 megs for this, with the rest of the disk being used by readyboost.

a) I noticed several things... 1. the library update access was very slow and 2 in ran out of space very quickly and when it did, the library ceased to function.

So the question is, why does removing these OS chitchat files freeze poser and why would running out of space to store these files ALSO cause poser to stop updating the library?

I've been studying the impact of all these files on a RAM disk so as not to destroy a real drive. It's not simply an issue of lots of files getting written and maybe forgetting about them or deleting them later. There's an underlying adverse affect on the drive over time.

The biggest impact I'm seeing is growth to the MFT of the RAM disk (which I reformat or it gets reset when I reboot). 

Here's a typical 1 hour session

I have a 200 meg ram drive used to store temporary internet files. All these temp files are getting written to this drive... about 3 or 4 per second.

Within about 1 hour, approx 10,000 - 15,000 are created.

The total of these files adds up to approx 3 to 6 megs but actually takes up close to 30 megs of HD space because of the way a 1k file may take up a full 4k of cluster space. 

That's not that bad part though.

The bad part which I'm seeing is the growth of the MFT. The MFT grows as best I can tell, by about 20 megs as well in this 1 hour session because it has to write out 10,000 - 20,000 entirely new entries as it appears they are entirely random sequences each poser session.

So imagine the impact on a real drive with a real MFT. It's not the temp files themselves that's the long term problem. It's this MFT growth that eventually may be crippling. As far as I understand it, the MFT never shrinks, and entries for each of these files, while they may be zeroed out if the files are deleted, are still effectively a row of zeros in a huge spreadsheet.

And it grows 10k or 20k new rows each time poser is run and kept open for about an hour.

A typical internet browser session all day may write .. I dunno... 1000 new entries. Maybe. No big deal. I don't think any OS was meant or can handle 20,000 new files added and removed each day. That's 2 million entries if you start up and run Poser for 1 hour, and do that 100 times.

THIS is the part that ... while it's not affecting ME anymore... could be seriously killing other people's machines. The temp files will eventually get deleted. The MFT will not.

Ok... what part of this did I get wrong? :)

I guess what I'm trying to say, kindly... is that I sort of feel like this is a tad bit more serious than just alot of files cluttering up drives. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but one of the first things I had written to SM early on was this MFT issue and at that point was only guessing. Now I have proof that at least on my system, it had the potential to destroy my drive in less than a year. Not joking.

Serious enough that, if it was >my< product or project I'd be thinking maybe of pulling the plug on the current method. Don't take that the wrong way. I have read everything written here and I do understand it's not SM or the programmers fault. I think it's something flakey with Flash/Flex and if was >me< I'd be on the phone with Adobe asking what the deal is.

But that's just me.

If nothing else I would suggest people using Poser use RAM drives for temp files or SD cards or removable USB drives. It's not worth killing your REAL OS drive for this.

I like Poser 8 alot (except light placement) and I want to see it succeed. That's why I'm posting. I am not bashing or complaining or trying to be annoying. I want this issue solved and move on. I think it's a serious issue.

Happy Holidays!

Quote - I think it's a serious issue.

Of course it's a serious issue for the small number of people that it's happening to, but the that it is only happening to a few people suggests that it's bery much down to a relatively unique combination of factors which makes it much trickier to track down a solution.

to a relatively unique combination of factors which makes it much trickier to track down a solution.<<

I would tend to agree with that except for two things:

1. It happened on my Vista / 32 bit system. In and of itself that's not unusual and it could have been as you said, various factors... yet....

2. More importantly, About 1 month ago I reformatted my drive, installed Windows 7, 64 bit, totally clean install with no A/V or any external apps from say Dell or HP or whatnot. Just the base package from MS.

I installed two apps in this order: Vue 8 infinite. Poser 8.

Poser 8 immediately started creating these files.

The only "uncommon" factor here then is Vue 8 Infinite. There was absolutely nothing else installed except Windows 7.

The factors you've missed out of your list are the versions of IE and the Flash Player/Plugin (as these are effectively part of Poser's library system).
It's also possible that you've got stuff like Windows Defender that would have come in via Windows Update.

Vue seems highly unlikely to be involved.

The factors you've missed out of your list are the versions of IE and the Flash Player/Plugin (as these are effectively part of Poser's library system).
It's also possible that you've got stuff like Windows Defender that would have come in via Windows Update.<<

As I said, it was a clean install of Windows 7. From there I installed Vue 8 Infinite, then Poser. Whatever Windows 7 from microsoft turns on by default (win defender, firewall, IE8, etc) was loaded, yes. Windows 7 does NOT install Flash, but Poser may and of course if you open IE and visit almost any page you'll be prompted to install Flash.

So while I'm not going to screw around with my system to test it out (because I'm not paid to do so), it seems pretty easy to replicate the path... do a clean install of Win7, install Poser 8 and see what happens. Nothing? Kick up IE8 and install the latest flash. Nothing?

If one wanted to introduce Vue 8 Infinite that would be next.

That's basically all the items, software wise, that all that would be in the mix: Win7, IE8, flash, Poser and in my case Vue 8 Infinite. There's obviously sub issues like Win Defender yes but that's part of the base Win7 package. And the base firewall setups in Win7.

My point is... ONE of all of those are the key elements. Because one of those triggers the temp file creation.

btw, if SM wants to pay me, I'll be happy to create a fresh drive partition, create a new windows install and start from there and track my steps as I install Poser 8 and see where the temp file creation actually begins. But honestly, I have better things to do with my time :)

Probably wildly off the mark, but what the hell. if they're hosting the web browser control, MS says

"You may have to clear the cache programmatically when your application hosts a WebBrowser control. However, this feature is not available through the interfaces of the WebBrowser control." I don't know if or why it would ignore a no cache directive but IIRC, the control's functions do not always function 100% the same as the browser itself.