Windows deleting Viewer's temp files?

[Steven Karp]

Background: I use Calibre and its viewer on a Windows tablet. Since I mostly use the device as a reader, that means the main program and viewer are running constantly.

Lately--i.e. in the week since I upgraded the tablet to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update--I've been experiencing a problem where the viewer fails the first time it needs to move from one file within a book to the next.

Example: I'm partway through Chapter 5 when I turn it off. When I resume reading, everything is fine until it tries to go to Chapter 6. At that point, I get an error message about missing files. If I close the viewer and relaunch it from Calibre, everything is fine again--I can move on to Chapter 6--until the next time I leave the tablet idle for a while.

This doesn't happen every time, but enough to be annoying. And, for the record, the Disk Cleanup tool is set to NOT delete temporary files. I had the same configuration in the previous version of Windows and never saw this problem.

Has anyone else seen this, and better yet, figured out how to fix it?

[kovidgoyal]

Just set the CALIBRE_TEMP_DIR environment variable to point somewhere whatever temp file cleaner you are using wont regard as a temp folder. https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cus...ment-variables

[Steven Karp]

Thanks, I'll do that--but I'll just be guessing at where to set it. My point is that I'm not using a temp file cleaner. Windows just started deleting the Calibre temp files on its own. Hopefully anyplace outside of the "User" directory tree will be safe.

[kovidgoyal]

As far as I know, windows does not delete temp files on its own, but then again, I'm not a windows guru...

[ShellShock]

Use Process Monitor https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sys...nloads/procmon to monitor the Calibre temp directory. This will tell you which processes are accessing files and possibly deleting them.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Steven Karp

Thanks, I'll do that--but I'll just be guessing at where to set it. My point is that I'm not using a temp file cleaner. Windows just started deleting the Calibre temp files on its own. Hopefully anyplace outside of the "User" directory tree will be safe.

In my experience Windows itself (at least up to 1703) has never deleted folders and files in the 'standard' 'temporary' locations, including %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp, which is the one most commonly used by applications, including calibre.

Maybe there is something in the Windows 1709 release to auto-delete temporary files, but I would expect to find a Setting to control it - if not then IMO its definitely a bug.

Create a directory something like c:\_calibre\temporary, and set the CALIBRE_TEMP_DIR environment variable to refer to that directory.

If, like me, you find the squishy little Windows dialogue box for editing environment variables a PITA to use, try this ==>> Rapid Environment Editor

BR