Large msg.tmp files

[Charlie]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

Windows XP Pro, SP2 -
Twice in the last month or so my hard drive has run out of space. The
culprit turns out to be files in the Temp folder under my profile named
"msg<nnn>.tmp" (where <nnn> is a random number such as 145). There is one
that is about 19GB and another that is about 3GB. Judging by the name, I
would think that they are e-mail related.

Here's what I found in the Event Logs:
* The 19 GB file was created while I was logged on using Remote Desktop.
The "created" time stamp and "modified" time stamp were about 20 minutes
apart, entirely within the period that I was logged on with RDP.
* The 3 GB file was created while I was logged on at the console. The
"modified" time stamp was one second after an Outlook application hang was
reported in the Application log.

There are 7 others of this type of file, all of them very reasonable in size
(4-31 KB).

Does anyone know why this is happening and what I might do to correct the
problem?

Thanks.

 

[bar]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

Are you certain that the files are 19 Gigabytes and not megabytes?

Most email servers would 'kill' any message over 10Megabytes, so it's
unlikely that they are mail files. Also unless you are on cable modem, there
files would take days to transfer at most connection speeds.

If ADSL is connected at 512 Kilo bits per second: that = 64 bytes per second
or roughly 3 Mega bytes per minute. Thus 3,000 Mega Bytes would take 50
hours to download.

Review your data, as it appears inaccurate: most ISPs with DSL allow only
400Mb download 'free' in a one month period.

"Charlie" wrote:

> Windows XP Pro, SP2 -
> Twice in the last month or so my hard drive has run out of space. The
> culprit turns out to be files in the Temp folder under my profile named
> "msg<nnn>.tmp" (where <nnn> is a random number such as 145). There is one
> that is about 19GB and another that is about 3GB. Judging by the name, I
> would think that they are e-mail related.
>
> Here's what I found in the Event Logs:
> * The 19 GB file was created while I was logged on using Remote Desktop.
> The "created" time stamp and "modified" time stamp were about 20 minutes
> apart, entirely within the period that I was logged on with RDP.
> * The 3 GB file was created while I was logged on at the console. The
> "modified" time stamp was one second after an Outlook application hang was
> reported in the Application log.
>
> There are 7 others of this type of file, all of them very reasonable in size
> (4-31 KB).
>
> Does anyone know why this is happening and what I might do to correct the
> problem?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>

 

[Charlie]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

Yes, I am absolutely positive that these files are 19 and 3 Gigabytes.
Remember, the problem is that my hard drive ran out of space. It's about 37
GB and normally has about 15 GB worth of data. Once I deleted those two tmp
files, I was back to 15 GB.

Also, this computer is at my office and is on a highspeed LAN, but that's
beside the point for the following reason:
These files would have been transferred over a 100Mb Ethernet
infrastructure. Even if the actual speed really was 100 Mb, that would be
about 12.5 MB per second, or about 750 MB per minute. The file took 20
minutes to create itself, so at that rate could only be about 15 GB.

It's good that you brought up the question of network speed, because I
hadn't thought of that. This makes it easy to come to the conclusion that
the file was created locally.

One of the first things I did was to make sure that my machines hadn't been
hijacked by a worm and used as an SMTP server, due to my suspicion that the
files are e-mail related.
That would have been unlikely because my machine is very well protected.

By the way, this same problem happened just about a month ago, so I assume
it will continue. If someone doesn't have a solution, I may just write a
simple batch file that deletes "msg*.tmp" and schedule it to run every night.

Thanks


"BAR" wrote:

> Are you certain that the files are 19 Gigabytes and not megabytes?
>
> Most email servers would 'kill' any message over 10Megabytes, so it's
> unlikely that they are mail files. Also unless you are on cable modem, there
> files would take days to transfer at most connection speeds.
>
> If ADSL is connected at 512 Kilo bits per second: that = 64 bytes per second
> or roughly 3 Mega bytes per minute. Thus 3,000 Mega Bytes would take 50
> hours to download.
>
> Review your data, as it appears inaccurate: most ISPs with DSL allow only
> 400Mb download 'free' in a one month period.
>
> "Charlie" wrote:
>
> > Windows XP Pro, SP2 -
> > Twice in the last month or so my hard drive has run out of space. The
> > culprit turns out to be files in the Temp folder under my profile named
> > "msg<nnn>.tmp" (where <nnn> is a random number such as 145). There is one
> > that is about 19GB and another that is about 3GB. Judging by the name, I
> > would think that they are e-mail related.
> >
> > Here's what I found in the Event Logs:
> > * The 19 GB file was created while I was logged on using Remote Desktop.
> > The "created" time stamp and "modified" time stamp were about 20 minutes
> > apart, entirely within the period that I was logged on with RDP.
> > * The 3 GB file was created while I was logged on at the console. The
> > "modified" time stamp was one second after an Outlook application hang was
> > reported in the Application log.
> >
> > There are 7 others of this type of file, all of them very reasonable in size
> > (4-31 KB).
> >
> > Does anyone know why this is happening and what I might do to correct the
> > problem?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> >
> >