Cannot create temporary folder

Question

I have an application that is a bank of questions for a pending Law exam. This has installed perfectly on my Windows 8.1 PC but today, when I try to access it, I get an error message:

Cannot create temporary folder

"C:\Users\MYNAME~1\AppData\Local\Temp\heg7647"

Please can anyone advise what is wrong and hopw this may be addressed.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Have you tried right-clicking on the shortcut to the program, or the .exe, and selecting the "Run As Administrator" option?  Do so even if your user is an Admin.

If you decide a reinstall is in order try right-clicking on the actual Setup.exe and selecting the "Run As Administrator" option?  Do so even if your user is an Admin.

Have you tried cleaning out your Temp folder, you can do it by typing %temp% in the RUN box.  Accessed via Windows Key + R.   This will open your Temp folder, there you can delete everything that Windows will allow you to do so.

It may be necessary to show both Hidden, and System Files, and also to uncheck "Hide known file types" in Control Panel/ Folder Options/ View, to navigate to, and see all files in, the mentioned Temp location.

Is the Temp folder that opens when you use %temp% the same one as ""C:\Users\MYNAME~1\AppData\Local\Temp", or is it opening another user's Temp folder?  In other words is "MYNAME~1" the user you are logged on with?

Does your program work if you test with another user rather than the current user?

Create a user account Windows 8.1

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/create-user-account#create-user-account=windows-8

Answer 2

I'm glad you have your machine up and running correctly.

You should always make sure that you have backups of your valuable data just in case you suffer from data loss.

I'll leave you with these options that come built in to Windows.

How to create a system image to refresh your Windows 8 PC

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2748351

How to create a custom refresh image in Windows 8

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/create-custom-refresh-image-in-windows-8/

Answer 3

Hi and again, thank you for taking the time to reply.

I have bitten the bullet and restored my PC to factory settings and gone through the rebuild process - took ages but I am back to where I was and my Law question application now works fine again. Can't thank you enough for your support - it's made me feel not completely alone as I am a bookkeeper and not an IT specialist!

Thanks again.

Answer 4

"When you say that I can delete the TEMP folder, do I just select all and hit delete? There's quite a lot of files and folders in there."

Only rubbish gets put in there, nothing valuable is, or should be, saved in your Temp folder.  Delete all that Windows allows you to.  Some files may be temporarily in use and will be undeletable, so don't worry about those.  However do not delete the actual  "Temp" folder, only the files therein.

You should be running Disk Cleanup regularly so that temp files don't build up. 

The username MYNAME~1 is a DOS configuration and is not usually seen in usernames in Windows 8.1.  Is it the name that you chose yourself or did it just sort involve over time?

As you don't have problems with another user then it may be that your current user profile has become corrupted.

How to fix corrupt user profile in windows 8?

http://mywindows8.org/fix-corrupt-profile-in-windows-8/

Fix a corrupted user profile

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/Windows7/Fix-a-corrupted-user-profile

Fix a corrupted user profile

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/769495bf-035c-4764-a538-c9b05c22001e1033.mspx

811151 - How to Copy User Data to a New User Profile

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811151

How to test integrity of user profile?

http://serverfault.com/questions/415580/how-to-test-integrity-of-user-profile

Answer 5

Thank you for your reply.

Right clicking and choosing "Run as Administrator" makes no difference, however, I have made a seperate account and the application opens correctly on this account (although I have to register it again with the publisher). It certainly does not give the error message I get on my main account.

%temp% gves the user as MYNAME~1 and maybe this is the issue? I am not sure if it was always ~1

When you say that I can delete the TEMP folder, do I just select all and hit delete? There's quite a lot of files and folders in there.

Thank you for your help - it is greatly apprecaited.