Creative's new drivers ate my porn

A power user who stores his important collections in c:\temp is hardly worthy of the term "power user". Typical "power users" know how to create a c:\movies folder and know not to store important stuff in a folder named "temp"...

c:\temp is not a clever place to strore any data...I bet the creative installer deleted its tempory install files and managed to take your pr0n with it....


Power user my eye. What id10t keeps stuff he wants to keep in the c:\temp directory? 50Gb of stuff in your temp that you wanted to keep? The driver probably flushed the temp directory to clear up it's own temp files. Creative should have simply cleared a sub-directory that they used, but hey...some programmers are stupid. But, you sir, deserve what you got. You NEVER keep anything you cherish in ANY directory called "temp".

the driver install script did what many of them do - unpacked itself to a temp directory, did its business and then wiped the directory when it had finished - without necessarily first checking to see if there was anything already there. I mean, theyre only *temp* files, right? Whats the worst thing that can happen?

PS: I do not work for Creafs driver development team, especially not the Windows one. Or else it would have used %TEMP% to obtain a temporary directory name instead of hardwiring C:\TEMP.

Storing files on "C:\temp\" , ya that's real smart! LOL!

Why would you leave anything you wanted to save in the C:\TEMP dir?

Great idea!

You are a "power user" that "hand deletes" your malware but doesn't know that LOTS of companies drivers extract to C:\Temp and then cleans up after their done? 

And WHY would you put something you are apparently are hot to keep into a folder called Temp anyways? 

Creative may make bad drivers, but you were just ASKING to get your pron deleted!

nothing new there, this TEMP-folder was used since DOS-times to store TEMPORARY files, and sometimes, completely retarded programmers still use this folder for their installations and deinstallations.
and to make things easy, sometimes they just tell the OS to completely delete this folder after deinstallations, since they think it was their installation routine to create this folder in the first place.
you have 2 files left (I hope it's good stuff) since you interrupted the deletion process via your hard reset shortly before it could finish the good lord's work.
the lesson?

a) the creative programmers are complete and utter idiots, nothing new there
b) avoid using the C:\temp\ folder at all costs, especially if it's supposed to hold your dear pr0nz collection.

You should have been more careful. The "temp" directory is just that... temporary. Don't ever save anything you want to keep in there.

You do know, power user that you are, that many utilities consider it their sacred duty to delete left-over temporary files, right? ;-)

My guess is that Creative's post-installation cleanup routine was just a bit less selective than it could have been. Maybe the programmer was a bit behind schedule. Maybe she thought she was doing you a favour. Who knows...? In any case, it's certainly not recommended procedure to leave data you want in a temp directory.

But it happens, sometime. Here's a funny little story to make you feel a bit better (BTW, feel free to edit, Ed):

A colleague was preparing to handle a misbehaving Windows installation in the usual way ("Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure"). So he diligently copied all the user's data from C: to D: under Windows, so as not to lose LFNs and whatnot. Then he rebooted in DOS and "FORMAT C: /U". Except, of course, that the first partition on the HDD was NTFS and the second was FAT...! I mean, it would have been even funnier if I didn't have to spend so many hours recovering all the data.

Interesting location to store your pr0n. I'd have chosen a more logical place myself. My only suggestion is, that the Creative drivers extracted the files it required for your installation to the C:/temp directory. Once complete, it erased the contents. Otherwise, I've no idea.

where to start...ok firstly are u using xp or vista?

secondly this could have been the OS and rather than app behaviour...

if u are a "power user", why the f do u:

a, keep loads of stuff in c:\temp, pretty dumb

a "power user" would keep stuff in a hidden subdir somewhere more safe, and ideally hidden and also encrypted...

b, should be pretty easy to recover what was deleted using an array of tools that a power user would have to hand..

c, then re create situation to test what was happening exactly

d, etc...


e - funny mail tho :) were the new drivers any better in the end? :)






what if the drivers unpacked into c:\temp then tryed to clean itself up by deleting everything in there. including your stuff.

As any long time DOS/Windows 'Power' user will know, c:\temp is just that, a temporary directory. 

This directory will be prone to purges periodically. A program seeing a c:\temp may use and purge it when it's finished.

Move on, nothing here to see (Pun intended)

Well as a "power" user you had the power to keep your "data" outside of your system's temporary directory. I'm assuming that you had the power and will to change your TEMP environment variable to that very folder.

Seems like this driver wipes all temporary files (read: what's inside your current temporary folder) which is kind of a nice thing since most apps/drivers/etc don't - let alone the users (power or not). The ideal would be deleting only the things that it puts there, but, oh well, temp is temp.

So if you considered pornography a temporary thing, maybe now it's a great opportunity to move along, reboot your life, get out more and download something else (with both hands). But not before creating something like "C:\Downloads".


So... c:\temp got cleaned.

Hint: the temp is for temporal, not for storing data.

guess he knows what "temp" stands for now eh?

As much as I can appreciate your power user status, and creative's inability to remove just their own install...I have to poke at you a little. Most power users would not store 50 gigs of data in a temp folder....

It seems that a "power user" should know not to intentionally store anything in a folder that is intended for temporary data. It's called "temp" for a reason. Also, what kind of power user uses a Microsoft operating systems?

Likely the installer used the temp directory to unpack itself and then removed the temp files with a nice *.* 

Why would you store anything in the temp folder you wanted? It's not a good hiding place for your pr0n anyway, as it's one of the best place to look for orphaned files. Just put it in my docs and keep your bweebs safe, or maybe use another partition even so that if you need a fresh os install all is safe. 

That aside, creative is crappy about their drivers. I don't think they use a normal msi to install. 

If you're really that broken up over your girl.jpg being lost to creative, look up the Asus Xonar card that just got EAX driver support.

Any power user would not be storing anything of any value in C:\temp. That's just pain stupid. Temp dirs ALWAYS have the potential to get wiped out at any time. That's the whole purpose of them.

A power user would be using truecrypt to hide their "sensitive bits", not some lame scheme hoping the no one will look there.

Perhaps you shouldn't have been storing stuff in a directory called C:\temp in the first place? It's not *that* unconceivable that some installer out there is programmed to put its own temp files there by default and delete the whole thing afterwards.

Moral of the story: don't store files in the temp directory (dumbass)

and this is why i keep a copy of my 184gb collection mirrored on my file server's raid5 array...

That's going to be a very pleasant surprise for countless people, if creative actually does what windows should do and finally empties the temp folder.
I've know people who had serious issues with disk space only to find that 30% of their space was being used up by leftover installer crap in the temp folder without them knowing,
Not to mention that some trojans and viruses can happily run from the temp folder for years.
(Excuse the slightly serious comment, I know it's meant as a humorous piece)

The driver used the folder c:\temp\ to put it's shit. What you hit restart it then deletes everything there, falsely ass-uming all the files there were his, and not user or other software files.

Many software use c:\temp folder as a temporary folder and cleans it out afterwards. That folder and similar folders such as c:\windows\temp or user folder\local settings\temp folder.
Especially C:\TEMP comes from the good old DOS times. Remember C:\DOS\TEMP

I don't care about Creative. You may f&(? them as much as you like but don' call yourself a power user.

You may also notice that after installing those drivers, the keys start to ease up and become less sticky after a while.

Well, I think the driver it self extract it's contents into c:\temp directory, and then after finishing the installation it will simply delete the directory, maybe those wmv files the driver couldn't delete so it kept them as usual you know...

btw, it's better to be p0rn free, it makes you more ( human ) :)

keep clicking, but not with p0rn ;)

Loose all that pr0n? POOR BASTARD? that's what you get from being legal and playing by the book.

"The drivers must have been religious zealots"

that the installer may be the culprit. Well yes using c:\temp\ to store your data may have helped

c:\temp\ has some history on the PC.

It would be interesting to know if the installer checked environment variables "tmp" and "temp"

You stored all your valuable pr0n in the C:\temp folder and you call yourself a power user?! What kind of tard are you?

"temp" is short for "temporary". "temporary" doesn't mean "I'll leave this crap here for years until I get off my duff and back it up to DVD," it means "A dozen utilities out there including Windoze itself may wipe this stuff out to free up space or just because the system has a brainfart."

Sounds like your system saw that it was strapped for space and decided to do something about it, and figured "only an idiot would leave *important* and *valuable* stuff in a folder called 'temp'."

I'd assume that the drivers were extracted to the default c:\temp during install, and that the installer was "nice" enough to *try* to clean up what it thought it created

Historically, c:\temp is a folder that contains files that could be deleted everytime a computer shuts down or boots up.

Obviously, some part of the OS or some software decided there was not enough room on the drive and cleaned out any temp folders it could find.

It would be safer to store the pr0n in the recycle bin.

couldnt have picked a better dir then c:\temp?

like a power user wouldnt know where programs like to write [I]TEMP[/I] files to....

recap~
your a f***ing moron!

Everyone knows that you should keep your p0rn collection in c:\recycler............ :)

The Creative installer probably routinely wipes all data from the temporary folder post-install. Maybe it could have limited itself to removing IT'S temporary data but it removed the whole thing. The whole point of a temporary folder is to put files you can ditch without regret, whenever you need extra space.
In any case, I can assure you, anyone storing "important" data taking months to accumulate in the C:\temp is most definitly NOT a power user, just another joe-sixpack.
You can thank Creative for a lesson well learned and store your data in a sensible location.

Then why keep it in the TEMP directory. You should know as an apparent "POWER USER" that its for TEMPORARY files. Obviously the drivers cleaned this out for you. Wasnt that nice.

as a postscript to my LOL comment about this "power user" finally learning what TEMP means...

Two things. 

First, there is a weil known issue with thumbnail creation (fixed oodles of ages ago via windows update) relating to video files being difficult to impossible to delete. Been there done that, and most power users have encountered this. So this explains the mystery as to why his two wmv files mysteriously remain.

Secondly, the TEMP path. Sigh. Would any reasonable person even begin to store something they wanted to save in a vaguely permanent fashion in C:\TEMP? Perhaps only if they've suffered repeated blunt head trauma. 

Mr. Power User, is Mr. Paranoid User. And a wee bit clueless? It is hard to say. Having downloaded the Creative driver package mentioned, it properly extracts it's contents to %TEMP% and conversely cleans up after itself too. But the default on an XP system is not C:\TEMP. Unless some power users has tweaked his environment variables and altered paths. 

It's amazing you guys didn't make this crap up isn't it????? :)

Perhaps your correspondent should ponder on the wisdom of using a commonly used temp directory for the collection of his imprOntant data. These directories can and will be emptied at will by windows and other software - if that directory is defined as the correct environmental variable. And in addition, poorly written software is liable to use a hardcoded c:/temp out of habit.

A power user? Pah, I bet he can't even code in assembly language.

Who would store files that they wanted to keep in a temp directory? When you install a program, it might put temp files there for the specific reason that they are temporary and they do not need to be kept. C:\temp is a windows folder for stuff that doesn't need to be kept. If you were to preform a harddrive cleaning in windows, it would give you the option of cleaning out your temporary folders. I believe that this is one of the many folder that windows looks in for this.

I think 1 of 2 things happened. The first is that like you side the drivers cleaned your c:\temp directory to clear out the drivers that it used in the installation. Alternatively, when windows rebooted and didn't have enough hard drive space to work, it started preforming a drive clean to make room for itself. Too bad the files in c:\temp are things that can generally be deleted. In your case, I believe that this assumption still fits.

If you need that much porn, you are viewing it too much and should look at getting help for pornography addiction or depression.

Good day

What kind of loser has 50 gigs of Porn? And what kind of "power user" uses a directory called TEMP to store his "precious" data? That's just retarded. And if that stuff was so important why didn't he back it up? After all it was just about a dozen DVDs; I assume it had been on his HDD for a long time, I don't even wanna think he downloaded/ripped that porn in a couple of days; either way it seems to me this guy needs some serious "shrink" time...

perhaps it might not be the best idea to save data you actually want to keep in a 'temp' folder on a windows machine ...

Storing stuff in c:\temp is like storing important documents in the recycle bin. A "power user" should know that.

Besides, its not like there's a short supply of porn out there. Really, how often do you go back and look at the old saved porn? I'd probably have twice that amount of free space if something deleted mine.

Some installation programs create a "temp" folder on the main drive and extracts it's files there. When the installation is complete it removes the contents of that folder. I've noticed that before so now I usually use a folder called "Temp Folder" instead.

Who stores anything in c:\temp\ ??? That's just asking for trouble. Now if it deleted the files from say... c:\pr0nisgood\ you might have a case.

On a side note, is there any software that does claim responsibility for data loss in it's EULA?

Why would you possibly store anything that you want to keep in a folder called temp, no matter where its at? Especially in C:\temp ?!?! You were just asking for something bad to happen. 

P.S. 50GB of p0rn?? That must be like 0.01% of all the p0rn getting sent through the tubes on those internets.

Is that by one hand....?

You store stuff in your temp folder? Do you also put your wallet in the trash can for safe keeping?

If you install a gf the porn issue should be resolved.
the only bad thing is that they are complicated and never bring an instruction manual

Okay, pal, here's the skinny...

When install programs are used, they will use the C:\temp\ location to push the files to the system before writing them out by whatever structure they are designed for. In short, Windows is always using this directory location for moving stuff around, so that sad fact is that if there's ever a problem with a file transfer, you're in danger of losing data in that location, as Windows will give the files the so-called "axe" to restore functionality to the system. Since these are drivers, this is the usual method, although programs themselves often get treated to an 'application data' folder created for them by their installer, so you get the temp files for them in there instead. In the future, just as you had mentioned, ya gotta make a backup, or at least throw the files in a protected location. Just anywhere but left in the temp folder. Once the drive gets that full, it gets dicey, as you're well aware. I had to re-partition my drive recently for a similar purpose (w/dual boot xp & vista no less, ouch!) Ya never know, maybe there's still a shadow copy of the files out there (not too sure how likely that is, given that it'll perma-delete if space is that low, hence your description...). Do a file and folder search for olk maybe, and cross yer fingers, and don't be surprised if the search takes a loooong time ^_^

Try this. http://www.runtime.org/products.htm it's worked wonder for me.

Well, I would not blame creative so fast. Could have been vista itself..
I would not dare to be running vista with so low disk space..

My thoughts are that because the C:\temp is a temp folder the installer for the drivers could have used it for it's temp files and instead of just deleting it's files it deleted everything in the folder, or nearly everything as why your system "crashed" was it erasing all the files and you interrupted the process before it finished with the last two files.

But again you have my grievance on your loss.

As allI I can say that if you lost anythiny in your "temp" directory it is ONLY your fault.
Nothing of any importance belongs there, and I find it strange that you were able to keep anything there for such a long time. I usually flush out my temp directory about once a week, to get rid of what windows doesn't erase.

The temp folder is, after all, you know... temporary. It's not a good idea to keep things in there. If windows is low on disk space it could clean that out. 

I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if saved somewhere else. "power user" my arse.

Well DOH !!! that is what you get for using temp folder for anything other then temporary stuff. C:\temp is cleaned after the install and it is not just Creative drivers that do that.

Power Users + valuable data saved in window's temp = power n00b.

I guess if you were looking for sympathy in the matter you will not get any from me. Personally, I think you should just get a girlfriend instead of relying on your junk covered computer monitor for your own personal satisfaction. 

I can honestly say you made my overall opinion of this site go down a notch. There is looking at stuff like that occasionally and then there is you flaunting your loss on a site that generates a fair amount of traffic. 

You really are a class act, and a very sick person! Seek help! Sexaholics anonymous. This site isnt helping you any.

Hi, I'm Hal and I am a strong Creationist. I believe our Lord works in many mysterious ways, and has blessed these Creative drivers in the name of this wonderous universe He has Created. Thus, your computer has also been blessed and miraculously purged of those unholy videos! 

If I were you, instead of complaining, I would immediately put the whole "Divinely Digital" computer for sale on Ebay for at least $50,000 USD. Some of my fellow zealots in the Bible belt will be sure to take it off your hands, blessing your bank account in the process. God will most certainly speak to us though this machine and tell us of His will. Bless you, brother! Always keep two hands on the keyboard, and you will not be led astray!

What the writer of this letter should learn is NOT to save data that you DON'T want to loose on C:\Temp, next time just use C:\PrOn instead ;)

I´m really sorry for your loss. I see it was very dear to you. But come on, how you let your treasures like that, unprotected? What if your HD fail? Or worse, if your wife/girlfriend find it and delete it? :-)
Well, good luck rebilding your archive. And always backup!

who in their right mind save contents on temp knowing the purpose of the said folder???

%systemdrive%\temp
%tmp%
%temp%

are all temporary locations of files. not only creative does delete all contents of a %temp% folder but even other applications.

get over it!

how could u say that u r power user.
a power user never stores his data in temp folder..lol

when you install drivers or software, some companies simply create a c:\temp folder to store everything there to load during installation then after installation is done it'll simply delete the contents of the directory. Yes, that can be considered lazy programming but it is a sadly prevalent practice. I always store my "temp" in a more unconventionally named folder like "unclassified" or "temporary downloads" etc etc.
Take that experience to heart and next time get a backup right away instead of "i''ll just get to that sometime."

why was the stuff in c:\temp ? is that not slightly unusual? i personally make use of the my docs folder...but i digress...

Sounds like you were playing with fire anyways with that little of free space on your Hard Disk. One should never go below 10% free on a Windows Drive sire.

Sorry you lost all your beloved pRon though

You put it in a directory called "temp". That means that it was in a location that could be used by anything else and then removed. If you were smart you would have put it in a really safe location like C:\myporn

If you were a true "power user", you would not have made such a noob mistake. You have been pwned.

-50DKP for not knowing that the fuck to do.

Please, just use pr0n and don't breed.

Pretty dumb place to put your files.

Creative wouldnt know decent drivers if they kicked them in the head repetedly. Theres a driver modder named daniel_k who has practicaly done Creatives job for them the past few months, and now in an open response to him on their forums, they've taken to MPAA style tactics to get him to stop releasing WORKING versions of THEIR drivers. If anyone wants to read all about it:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332

Creative wouldnt know decent drivers if they kicked them in the head repetedly. Theres a driver modder named daniel_k who has practicaly done Creatives job for them the past few months, and now in an open response to him on their forums, they've taken to MPAA style tactics to get him to stop releasing WORKING versions of THEIR drivers. If anyone wants to read all about it:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332

*no other comment*

I feel your pain. This darn drivers, hot only erased my porn, they also drunk my beer and smoked my gandja. Good thing i am a boy, else this drives would leave me with nothing to play with ... But at least i have learned my lesson, not to install such products and keep my beer away from c:\ temp.

One can witness and be balanced about the death & destruction surrounding one’s space but some how, Creative’s virulency always penetrates. It must be their genetics and that can only mean that they are part of Big D, that smelly horny beastie. And here are some facts about the genetics of the Chinese.

The northern Chinese are arty-farties who like to emphasise their “R” as if it’s an achievemnt of mankind. All because the consonant “R” is missing in the chinese vocabulary [and a J Woss - just spit is out man]. So, when it comes to speaking “English”, northerners, especially the “fashionable” Shanghai-ese, gravitates to the Yankee version, more so when it offers them the opportunity to “venom” out the Irish-drawl “R”. Yes, these are achievers indeed but not when you hear Diana Elizabeth Wong [whose realisation of “Christianity” is poodles, rainbowed poodles and …. ‘tis the day to be kind-ish] mix of Sino-Anglo-Yanko Irish. Even the governmental propagandist greyness is following suit and Elvis Ignatius Chan are two-a-penny within their ranks. One reason why Chairman Mao is refusing to take his rebirth.

When it comes to The Southerners, only the Cantonese can cook and the foulness capability of the dialect is beyond Olympian proportions [and crapola Chinese take-aways/take-outs are not necessarily Cantonese but usually beansprouting DIY imaginations of other dialectical wanderers]. When it comes to munay/lollies, The Hokkien [or Fujianese] “am eets” and this is where Creative comes in. Hokkiens are “The Chinese Jews” [with respect to true Jewish people]. They can make money from even an ant and when it comes to the language of money, only greed & fear counts. Nothing else. Customers? Dumb trusting fools you mean. As we all know too well, the other side of greed is fear – of exposure – which is where the idea of “secrecy” comes in. And guess what is the motto of Fear/Greed? It is, “On a need to know basis”.

The overwhelming dialectical in Singapore is … Hokkien. “M’Lud, I rest my case”.

putting stuff you want to keep in c:\temp? a power user? give me a break.

Ouch... Oh well, just get some more. ^_^

So you had all these files in a directory called "temp"? Which the Creative installation probably used as the name of its temporary working directory? So when it cleaned itself up after the installation, it deleted all your files as well?

What did you expect?

AT adds: I never thought of that.

I know it sounds crazy, but maybe you shouldn't store files in a temp directory. Anything being deleted there is fair game: it's expected to be clutter.

Maybe it's just me, but usually a power user wouldn't keep 50g of "valuable" data in a folder called "temp". :)

That's just inviting trouble...

Who in their right mind keeps anything important in a temp folder. You know it's bound to get cleaned after some badly written install program.

"I had to manually hard-reset the computer."
"I am able to erase spyware by hand..."
"50 gigs of pr0n in the c:\temp\ directory"

Yes, i'm understand. You are able to make things "manually".

Lots of software developers expect that only temporary files will reside in the temp directory. You weren't very bright putting anything of lasting value there.

Your Creative driver, as many other apps, use the system default C:\temp as a working directory to unpack and install stuff on your system. Creative setup last command must simply have been DELETE C:\TEMP\*.* when it was done. 

Dude, never put something ''important'' in a ''temp'' directory like that, especially on the C drive, it's suicidal... As a matter of fact, never put any data whatsoever in C:. Always create a second D: partition to shield your data from any rogue software that don’t play nice with your C:. So if a catastrophic event occur with your C (Virus and such), so bad in fact that you actually lost access to the boot partition, you just reformat and re-install windows without ever worrying about any of your data sitting on D.

Creative has been known for horrible drivers for years. Now they're putting the smack down on people who release good ones. Sign the petition demanding that they stop this, release good drivers (and support them), and support open source development.

http://www.petitiononline.com/crtvlabs/petition.html

:DDD

I can't confirm or deny this... all I can say for certain is that the Fatal1ty drivers didn't clear my Temp directory (also c:\Temp) so I dunno what happened there...

This story did, however, remind me of Half-life and what it did to my system. I had an 8gb HDD at the time, nearly full (500mb free) with an install of the original Half-life - version 1.0.0.4. Since I had no intentions of ever using them, I decided to uninstall the Sierra tools that came along for the ride (later to become Steam). 500mb free, after all, isn't a great amount.

It took a long time. A VERY long time. But I figured it was just Sierra being themselves and it was as poorly designed as the installer was in the first place. Boy was I surprised, though, when I found that it'd not only removed what I'd asked, but also some 6gb of other stuff I had on my drive under both C:\Program Files (where the utilities were) and C:\Games (where I had Half-life installed). Remaining directories (those that weren't completely removed, including the directory itself) were left half-empty, hundreds of hours of saved games lost, with no real pattern or reason as to why it might have happened.

Sierra's response when I e-mailed them to complain? "Please update to v1.0.0.5 before attempting to uninstall." Evidently, they knew they'd released software which had such potential side-effects, and even had to patch it up to such a low standard (one would assume they started with 1.0.0.0).

I've never purchased a Sierra title since.

...why'd you put your porn in a well-known temporary directory? LMAO! It's like giving a toddler a big red button all the while saying "Don't press it." 

Funny story. No sympathy. LOL

the temp directory in the windows folder is definitely NOt the best place to save your files pal.... it is one of the first folders to empty when you are running low in disk space, just as you were....

i dont know, if im a poweruser,maybe.
but i wouldnt give my treasury into the temp directory. and if i would do, and this happend to me, i wouldnt write it in the inquirer and be emphatic about, what a damn good poweruser i am.

C:\Temp = Temporary directory, as a power user you should know to NOT use that folder as a storage place.

Common Sense eludes some people, and then blame drivers for actually clearing out junk, of course it shouldn't have done that, but with an impatient Hard-Reset, who's to know if it was the drivers, windows or a combination of both.

Are you kidding me.....

It's always been fair game by operating systems, installation programs and driver installations to delete any and/or everything in c:\temp and c:\windows\temp. Most installation programs do this so they get rid of the junk (or DATA in your case) before they start copying over their files into the folder. Why on earth would you keep something important to you in those <DIRs>. It's kinda like putting your wallet in the trash can on the street and not expecting it to get picked up. I just revoked your POWER USER status.

hmm, i must say that i have my doubts about the poweruser status he gives himself.

Really, since when do you put all your beloved porn in the /temp directory. Even your regular code18 kind of person will be able to trenslate temp as temporary......

I must say that he got what he deserved. Ok, creative kinda screwed too as it shouldnt have cleared the folder but still, getting /temp cleared was an accident that was bound to happen sooner or later.

I guess the Anti-P0rn fairy has attacked yet again !! Shame on you :P~

Sorry about your porn- I feel your pain.
However I would never have left files as important as porn in a directory called c:\temp (temp is for temporary, you know, and your porn deserves a better place).
Although it is very bad for the Creative software to delete whatever stuff it pleases, even in c:\temp, I think you were a bit careless...

Dear mister sticky fingers, there's a reason why it's called temp! If you keep your files there then you've got no right to complain

Your file table got pwnd noob.

What a tool.

Q: Who saves their data to a temp folder anyways?

A: An ignorant user.

I just wonder whether the person who wrote this article a) wrote it tongue-in-cheek b), is totally clueless about the use of the c:\temp\ directory, and c) saves their e-mails in the Deleted folder....

"OMG?!?" and "WTF?!" come to mind when reading this article. 
I mean, what kind of idiot stores 50gigs of anything they wanna keep in c:\temp????
The bloke has broken one of the biggest unwritten rule when working with windows, (if you can help it) NEVER STORE ANY DATA ON C:\ 

May I suggest that the guy in question do a system restore (assuming he has had the forsight to leave it turned on) to get his pr0n back and burn it off on shiny dvd-r media 
If on the other hand, he has turned system restore off...all we can do is laugh!

becauze before reading this article.. i've never heard of someone who keeps his/her porn in the C drive temp folder!!

What kind of git leaves 50 GB of important files in C:\temp ?

It's really bad programming practice, but a lot of installers use the C[Local Drive]:\Temp\ folder to unpack all the files, then after the install, the installer will completely erase all data in the Temp folder.

Again it's really bad programming practice but it saves the coder time by saying "delete contents of temp folder" rather than saying "delete file1, then file2, then file 3, then file 4..... file 104" etc.

PS. Never a good idea to hide files in the Temp folders for exactly this reason. Be a man... Put your porn in:

C:\My Huge Porn Collection\

What was the name of that folder? That's right, 'Temporary'. C'mon, I've been working on computers for almost 30 years and any power user would know that temp=exactly that: a 'temporary' folder. Don't tell me you're the kind of person that lives out of the the 'Deleted Items' folder, too?

Honestly mate it was bound to happen at some point now tell me who seriously puts there *rolls eyes* important data and saves it in a windows or program created temp folder on the computer, dont knock something because of your own ignorance if you actually filed your document properly you wouldnt have lost your leasure videos.

if it wasnt this it could have easily have been a drive cleaning utility, then what would you knock that program too because it deleted your badly filed documents also.

what this shows you is dont save data you want to keep in a folder name TEMP on a windows computer unless its in a subfolder of a non windows folder or directly in the drive directory.

i know it shouldnt have happened and you will probably go "but it shouldnt have deleted my pronzorz WTFXORZBBZN00BZ!!!1!!" but dont make it a risk in the first place throught bad document filing

Your file table got pwnd noob.

First of all, I sympathize. No one should be submitted to having lost 50 gigs of his private collection, for which he spent countless hours searching screening etc... Sorry!
Now what might have happened?
I have seen other programs create a folder [root]:\temp\ on which they unzip the installation files, overwriting anything on the catalog. And from there they install!
Now watch carefully! When they ask for a restart, they have the nasty habit of giving the command to erase the data they have extracted previously, on the next log on. And since the installer is generic, they simply erase all contents of the folder, and the folder itself. 
Your Computer was not responding because each passing second your precious collection was actually being deleted.
If you rebooted manually earlier you might have saved more data.
What have we learned today. Creative has an awful support system.-

What kind of idiot keeps his "valuable" data in the TEMP folder?!?

Bahahahhaahaahha 0wned.

You probably had your temp folder flushed, drivers deleted all the temp files it used during installation alongside with your collection.

I must say one more time, 0wned.

This begs the question, can anyone recommend a good soundcard for games, with good driver support?

Its usually assumed that anything in the temp folder is safe to delete. When the driver deletes its own temporary files it must just empty the whole directory instead of cleanup its own files specifically.

Secure your stash better.

Never trust self proclaim power user only another person can declare somebody else a power user.. 

That being said to me a power user would have used an undelete program and simply get on with its life.

Installations usually create temp folders normally under root c:\ or "youruser\windows\temp" iether way, if you name your own folders similiar to those used by windows itself, chances are you loose data, especially temp ones. if you wanted the "temp" name, put it somewhere else like "c:\johndoe\temp" not c:\temp.

Umm yea... never store anything in /temp /tmp or anything else that is regarded as expendable.... just asking for trouble.... why not /pron? :-(

I just LOVE the fact you allowed for so many comments for this article. I found myself reading a few, then noticint the scroll bar I started scrolling down. The more comments I saw, the more I laughed.

And to Mr. Power User, (sprinkle of salt) you must have gotten confused. What you think and what you may be are not always the same. To me you sound more like a Power Ranger. A fictional character of virtual intelligence.

Why don't you just download some more porn? 50gb is low by any power user's standards. I mean, 50gb should be about 70 movies. Assuming 90 minutes a movie, that's some 6300 minutes.
So you obviously have alot of time on your hands.
Maybe you are not a power ranger after all, maybe you're just a...(need a hint?)

To all you guys who think he was stupid for putting stuff in C:\TEMP, this is not the DOS days.

%TEMP% or %TMP% do not point to C:\TEMP, it is not a system directory, and an installer should never use anything but %TEMP% (<C>:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp).

User-created directories in the root should be safe. Regardless of their name. Really.

Sheesh. I wonder who are the "Power Users" here.

Is this an early April fool's? You certainly got enough comments.

Dear Power User, from today please don't ever call yourself a power user as you have been a digress to all the power user community. Why in the world would anyone keep imp data (Porn = Imp data ?? huh ???) in a temp folder ?? Do you know the term after installation driver back up file cleaning, which is stored in temp file ?? if not you are not a power user...

Power users don't tend to care about such trivial things. The fact you lot obsess over this reveals very obvious retardations in the lot of you. Did you take your Aderall or Risperdal this morning? None of you are smart for pointing this out, just obsessive and retarded.

Why anyone didn't tell him that temp is meant for temporary files?

Should have been the title of this article. 

Sure I have pr0zn on my c:\temp\ folder, but that's because its temporary, a but trashy, and not worth a five finger salute. a script will wipe it out c:\temp\*.mp* weekly.

Spotting the trend in the comments, I see this kinda of article has wound up the kind of "power" comment posters who don't read what everyone else has said, to make the same bleeding obvious comment, yet again for the 15th time.

Really, what twit programmer uses c:\temp anyway. Let alone then writes the line of code that nukes the folder, likely taking out other temp files in use by whatever app by another twit's-r-us outfit?
No wonder your PC locked up on reboot.

What? A power user that can't even hide his own prons to a different folder, and hide it? now thats lazy...

A power user he is, undoubtedly, but not a wise one. We all are at times. We became complacent and forgot the word backup. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

In Windows the standard temp directory is actually inside your profile.

For Creative to be using C:\temp is non-standard, to be deleting the entire contents of a directory it didn't create is sheer idiocy.

Must be Creative fan-boi season or something..

My dear friend, allow me to advise you a little on hiding porn.

First of all, I think it isn't very smart to store 50GB of porn onto something as foolish as c:\temp

Next, if you are thinking of hiding your porn the next time (my deepest condolences as I know how does it feel to lose even 1GB worth of Photos), maybe you could just do it under a sub-sub-sub-sub directory under a user access folder that no one in their right frame of mind (even kids) would normally access.

Once again, my deepest condolences for your time lost on 50GB of Porn.

P/S: Mind telling me what category it belongs to? I might wanna have a dig around if I've got the time. =P

Maybe try running some file recovery software? Otherwise, meh, pron is a free curse.

50 Gig of p0rn hey, I'm pushing almost 300 Gig all divX... So naturaly I use a seperate HDD and never leave it in a folder called *TEMP*... So move over noob got to get back to bating!

perhaps he thinks TEMP is temperature?

Watching porn turns up the heat.. thus turns up temperature.

Logic told him that, If you want to turm up the heat, thus body temperature, keep your porn in temp dir

Power user got notting to do with hidding your porn.
You are saying that he must use, this dir "Here are my porn movies mom dad and if you wich check it sister"

Where do you hidde it? you can use the encrypt folder stuff like I did, and I lost all my porn :D

The point in here is, creative's coders are monkeys with notebooks like I said in the creative forums, "linux thread".

A friend of mine had all his p0rn hidden in a folder in his games directory. One day he installed a game to his games folder C:\games (first mistake). This put all the files in his games folder not C:\games\game folder. So he uninstalled the game (second mistake). This deleted his games folder and along with it all his games and his porn. His reaction to loosing his porn collection had to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Picture some one loosing a loved one then times that by 10.

Every self styled expert here seems to think C:\Temp is a SYSTEM temp folder. It isn't. Nor is it in your Path unless you explicitly make it so. The CORRECT path is:
C:\Documents and Settings\User name\Local Settings\Temp
Although occasionally C:\WINDOWS\Temp gets used by older programs.

C:\temp has been non standard for a considerable length of time and SHOULD have been safe. If Creative did what so many here think it did, then Creative is stuck in the last century. 

Instead of flaming the victim I will take this as a warning myself. Some companies still don't use standard practices. Not exactly a surprise that Creative would be one of them. I just renamed the Drive:\temp folders on all of my drives just to be sure it doesn't happen to me. Been doing the same as the victim for years without a problem but no sense not learning from someone else's disaster.

Storing files in C:\TEMP may not be the smartest thing to do. But I'll plead guilty of the same thing. Many times I download into the \Document and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp directory too and then I don't move those downloads to another place.

I "plan" to sort them out some time but those times never came. There was once I tried some cleaner utility and that cleaner utility didn't ask permission it'll be housecleaning the \temp directory there.. oh well, my downloads got erased as well.. :-(

Up to this day I still have files in my temp\ folder... (not necessarily important; I suppose the posted of this article didn't say those files that got erased are THAT important, but its sure to be a hassle to download them again.)

And yes, I also consider myself veering towards as a power user (I also remove spyware manually; relegating automated anti-spyware utilities to removing the non-active traces of spywares that might still be left behind.)

So sue me.. ;-)

Open up a command prompt (cmd.exe) and type in "set" then enter.

TEMP=C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~1\Temp
TMP=C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~1\Temp

And that as far as I am concerned is where the installer should have used as its temporary work directory.

Even on old DOS install it defaulted to c:\dos\temp\ not c:\temp\

And no, I would not personally use c:\temp\ for storing anything I wanted to keep.

I kept a small fortune in rubies and diamonds in the wheelie bin my local council provided me with.

One day it was just gone!

Just few days ago I read somewhere that "Every temporary folder eventually becomes a working folder".

You basically stamped "Kick ME" on your forehead and proceeded to walk into a room of people with a sadist sense of humor.

C:\temp is a horrible place to store anything. 

I hate to say it, but this was the wrong place to post this. A power user can recover files even after a full format. He doesn't store things in the Temp directory, and most likely a power user has either a NAS, a server, or atleast an old desktop used as a server with some form of storage redundency that he uses to store things he wants to keep.

Well, look at it this way. You needed a lesson and received one. It happens to us all at one time or another.

Nice lead up to April fools day. Surely no one can be that stupid then write a letter about it.

Hey guys, this isn't MS-DOS we're talking about. In Windows XP and I presume Vista, "TEMP" and "TMP" are path variables that normally point to something like:

TEMP=C:\DOCUME~1\Username\LOCALS~1\Temp
TMP=C:\DOCUME~1\Username\LOCALS~1\Temp

THAT is where the installers should put the crud! The C:\TEMP directory is a perfectly normal place to put, uh, low-priority user data. No application should delete it. And those who use TEMP should create subdirectories of their own to delete, not delete the whole thing.

First off, what "power user" stores stuff in a directory labeled Temp?

Yes, if it was the Creative driver installer that nuked the contents of Temp that is a bug, but at the same time storing things in Temp is NEVER a good idea.

Second, what kind of power user still uses Windows? Make the switch today, you won't regret it.

c:\temp is not a temporary folder

In MS-DOS and WIN9x days... YES.

In MS OS after WinME/9x...
type SET in the command prompt and you will see the _REAL_ TEMP (temporary) folder.

Jurassic Creative programmers are still living in the MS-DOS, WIN9x days... that's why they hardcoded/used C:\TEMP. Damn! Wake-up. This is VISTA!

But even so, a good programmer (and program) should clean only their mess - meaning, delete only files they dumped on purpose. Otherwise, it's way DANGEROUS! This is a INSTALLER, not a hardrive cleaner.

my .05 cent...

Reading the original article, I can't see that "The Letterman" anywhere mentions anything about creating a "c:\windows\temp" directory for his 'recreational' files... (?) 

"C:\temp", on the other hand... 

- My point: Just checked my win98 and XP C-directories, and NOWHERE can I see ANY directory named "C:\temp". 
(though there IS a C:\Windows\TEMP... LOL)

So maybe...:
A) He has made his own "C:\temp" dir - big deal...

B) BUT the Creative driver install does the same (or tries to use existing ones, beliveing that no sane person would do that) and cleans up afterwards(but unable to delete the dir itself, due to some admin stuff?)



:P


SO.... how about giving this guy some benefit of the doubt ? 

(just a couple of cents) 

*

PS: I actually have! a directory called TEMP, made it myself - though the full path is D:\TEMP... LOL :D

Do you like porn movies?
So, Creative F!@#$%$#%
with your HD!

"Vc não gosta de pornô?
Então, a Creative literalmente f!$%$%
seu HD!"
rsrsrs

why dont people keep their porn in a folder called porn. why is it so shameful to do it, every normal male person has some sort of porn. why do we hide it its common. my porn is well hidden in a folder called porn and on my desktop