Issues After Moving Windows TEMP & TMP Directories

To save space on my OS drive, I moved both the user account & system TEMP / TMP folder locations to a larger drive. I rebooted & tested the effects for a few days. Windows itself has not given me any noticeable issues. But I have noticed at least two programs that do not like this change. Malwarebytes & an addon for Firefox called Save Images.

The issue with MB is with the "right click" context menu in Windows. When the TEMP/TMP folders are moved, MB will not respond at all to using the right click context menu to scan an individual file or folder. It simply does nothing. Performing the same action, AVG Free is not affected at all. It performs normally.

The Firefox addon is an image downloader. You simply right click on the page with the images that you want to download & it will open them all on a seperate tab to view & then download. The issue with it after the TEMP/TMP folder move is that when you try to load the images into the new tab, Firefox will open a new tab, but instead of image files laid out on the page, there will be a list of all the top level file folders on the drive where I put the TEMP/TMP directories. A similar image downloader in Chrome is not affected. So it is software specific.

I asked on the MB forum what can I do to make MB behave normally with my changes & the response was that there was no way at this time.

To the point, please help me to understand why do these programs have issues with the TEMP/TMP folders being moved if Windows knows where they are. Windows after all is the "enviroment" in which these programs operate. Is it not in charge of "directing traffic" for all the information back and forth on your system?

Can anything be done on my end to help these programs work as intended with my changes?

CountMike said:

Hi. just how did you move those folders ?

By editing the paths in the environment variables. Control panel \ System \ Advanced system settings \ Environment variables.

You're supposed to create the new paths (and copy any existing files from old paths) before editing Environment variables to show the new paths.

In other words you should leave the existing TEMP / TMP folders in place and create copies in the new locations.

Callender said:

You're supposed to create the new paths (and copy any existing files from old paths) before editing Environment variables to show the new paths.

In other words you should leave the existing TEMP / TMP folders in place and create copies in the new locations.

#1) On another drive I created two new folders. <path 1>/TEMP folder for the user account & a separate <path 2>/TEMP folder for the system. I changed the paths of the existing TEMP / TMP directories to these new folders in the environment variables area of windows. The existing user account TEMP / TMP pointed to the same directory. The same applies to the system folders (but a different path than the user account)
#2) I did not delete any existing folders
#3) I rebooted
#4) I cannot see if windows kept the old directories or not. This account is not an elevated admin at the moment.

I am not sure what why would you need to copy the contents of the temp directory? Windows will recreate them as required. You can routinely delete everything in these folders that windows will allow you to and it will recreate whatever it requires.

Well I've only ever moved TEMP / TMP when I was using a RAMdisk. Anyway from the horse's mouth so to speak.

Can I move my TEMP and TMP data to a RAMDisk - Microsoft Community

I know that RAMdisk is being discussed but surely the same applies when moving to any other drive?

If your browser or other application is following system defined paths then the new locations should works but if files in temp folders are missing because they were not copied across then it could cause problems.

EDIT: Aslo from this source:

How do I change the location of the Windows temporary files folder - and should I?

A couple of notes about making the change:
The folder must exist - Windows will not create it for you. If it doesn't exist, it's unclear what will happen, but most likely Windows will put the temporary files is a random location, or some programs may not work at all.

RE: Firefox. Would suggest a clean FF install. See backup profile:

Firefox Keeps Re-enabling Bing Solved - Page 3 - Windows 10 Forums

Then see here about deleting FF leftovers before reinstalling. Apologies if you know this already.

Firefox Keeps Re-enabling Bing Solved - Page 7 - Windows 10 Forums

enthusiast said:

I am not sure what why would you need to copy the contents of the temp directory? Windows will recreate them as required. You can routinely delete everything in these folders that windows will allow you to and it will recreate whatever it requires.

Well windows disk cleanup excludes temp files that are newer than 7 days old but it's done that way so that it won't cause problems.
You could change this setting with a registry hack:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Temporary Files
by setting a lower value for "last access" but personally I leave it set to 1 - in other words 24 hours.
Also see Ccleaner recommended settings for temp files:

In other words some temp files are important.