Visual Studio making thousands of files in %temp%

Question

Visual Studio making thousands of files in %temp%

Eunsoo Jeon 36

My %temp% is filled with temp files about VS, taking a few dozen GBs of my storage.
all of them are named with random characters like the ones below,

and having the same content as this.

are these files necessary for VS? How can I stop this?

Venkatesh Konar 0 Reputation points

2023-11-10T03:42:14.4466667+00:00
We request you to provide more detail about the files with random extensions being created in Visual Studio Appdata>Local> Temp Folder .

We observed a scenario where the user using Visual Studio Software v2015or v2022 . Various temp files with random extension are created on the Temp Folder. Sometimes there are some file with extension .ryk (For eg: Filename.ryk). The file with .ryk extension get detected by our security solutions and generate a alert that possible ransomware alert is observed. As .ryk file are related to Ryuk Ransomware.

Kindly clear the below points.

Clarify the creation of temporary file with random extension are expected behaviour while user uses the Visual Studio.

How can we whitelist this scenario as we cannot whitelist the path of temp folder.

1 answer

Your answer

Venkatesh Konar 0 Reputation points

2023-11-10T03:42:14.4466667+00:00

We request you to provide more detail about the files with random extensions being created in Visual Studio Appdata>Local> Temp Folder .

We observed a scenario where the user using Visual Studio Software v2015or v2022 . Various temp files with random extension are created on the Temp Folder. Sometimes there are some file with extension .ryk (For eg: Filename.ryk). The file with .ryk extension get detected by our security solutions and generate a alert that possible ransomware alert is observed. As .ryk file are related to Ryuk Ransomware.

Kindly clear the below points.

Clarify the creation of temporary file with random extension are expected behaviour while user uses the Visual Studio.

How can we whitelist this scenario as we cannot whitelist the path of temp folder.

Answer 1

Anna Xiu-MSFT 31,056 Microsoft External Staff

Hi @Eunsoo Jeon ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

The %temp% folder is used to store temporary files.
For example, when you install the VS, the relevant installation logs will be recorded in the %temp% directory.
You can clear the %temp% folder to free up storage space.

In the second picture, it is Visual Studio Installer directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer. It is not recommended to delete the folder.

Sincerely,
Anna
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Eunsoo Jeon 36 Reputation points

2022-11-02T12:37:09.043+00:00

Thanks for kind answers, anna!

But my second picture was captured from C:\Users(my name)\Appdata\Local\Temp\random name('igyghcmp.u3p' or 'tyjboxtf.53f' for example, hundreds of them are same)... If this file was meant to be in the VS Installer directory as you said, it seems like VS is downloading the full installer in wrong directory(over and over again). Please check this issue :)

Also, I searched for some info and found that If I disable Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> VisualStudio -> Updates -> BackgroundDownload task, no such files will be made again. So I'm guessing this is a problem from BackgroundDownload task(if not intended), hope it helps!
Anna Xiu-MSFT 31,056 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2022-11-03T08:48:21.303+00:00

Hello, I cannot find the Visual Studio Installer files in my %temp% folder. But I found this similar issue.
I suppose you are right. The BackgroundDownload task places the VS installer files to the %temp% folder.
The Visual Studio installer files should be saved in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer.
If you can find the installer files in the path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer, I suppose you can clear %temp% folder to ignore it.

If you think it is still a problem, please directly report it to product team in Developer Community:
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/VisualStudio/report?entry=problem

Thanks for your feedback!
GL 20 Reputation points

2023-08-14T19:06:06.7+00:00

A terrible "response" from microsoft. Those who work at microsoft are the one who need to jump through hoops not the end user. Take 5 minutes to reproduce the problem. This is happening to thousands of users. But since NOT everyone checks their temp folder, most are unware. On my machine TODAY the repeated duplicate files in %temp% FROM VISUAL STUDIO are totaling more than 45 GB. A product that is using up nearly 50 GB of SSD space and that is not a PRIORITY 1 BUG-FIX ISSUE? Wow.
GL 20 Reputation points

2023-08-14T19:10:06.25+00:00

A terrible "response" from microsoft. Those who work at microsoft are the one who need to jump through hoops not the end user. Take 5 minutes to reproduce the problem. This is happening to thousands of users. But since NOT everyone checks their temp folder, most are unware. On my machine the repeated duplicate files in %temp% FROM VISUAL STUDIO are totaling more than 45 GB. A product that is using up nearly 50 GB of SSD space FOR NO REASON and that is not a PRIORITY 1 BUG-FIX ISSUE? Wow.
G L 10 Reputation points

2023-08-14T19:12:28.8966667+00:00

A terrible "response" from microsoft. Those who work at microsoft are the one who need to jump through hoops not the end user. Take 5 minutes to reproduce the problem. This is happening to thousands of users. But since NOT everyone checks their temp folder, most are unaware. On my machine the repeated duplicate folders and files in %temp% FROM VISUAL STUDIO are totaling more than 45 GB. A product that is using up nearly 50 GB of SSD space FOR NO REASON and that is not a PRIORITY 1 BUG-FIX ISSUE? Wow.
Mac 10 Reputation points

2024-06-05T05:04:49.8233333+00:00

I know this is two years later, but I want to point out that this is still a thing.

Every single time the PC starts up, the VS installer folder gets duplicated into the windows temp folder under AppData/Local/Temp. It's always three different folders all created at the same point in time, with one of the three having what is shown in the original post. The other two just contain a JSON file each, again having to do with Visual Studio.

These are safe to delete, but that's not the problem. The problem is that these are getting created every single time the PC starts up. This means that if you're like me and turn your PC off whenever it's not in use, you end up with dozens of gigabytes worth of Visual Studio install files being saved to your temp directory after only a few months of normal use.
Thomas E. Kutzner 5 Reputation points

2025-01-23T20:13:31.2033333+00:00

This is still a problem two and a half years later.

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Visual Studio making thousands of files in %temp%

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