Xampp\tmp filled up with 26 gigs over the past couple days.

[sharpnova]

This morning I got on my computer to find my C drive had gone from 20 gigs free to 20 megs free. I started snooping around folders and found a folder in xampp:

c:\xampp\tmp

it's filled with 26 gigs of .tmp files.

1. why did this happen?
2. is it safe to delete all of it?

[Izzy]

What do the content mainly consist of?

Usually the content is made up of session data and a couple of folders that if deleted will be created again if required.

Normally it would be safe to delete the contents but do not delete the tmp folder as it is needed also you can leave the file why.tmp and perhaps read this file.

Maybe stop all XAMPP components before deleting the contents in case some of the files are in use.

I have no idea why it happened as my crystal ball has over heated with all the use it gets on this forum and is in for repair.

BTW while you are doing a cleanup and you have stopped Apache and MySQL etc. empty the apache\logs\error.log file and the access.log file as they will build up if not kept within reason from time to time.

[sharpnova]

Well I deleted the files but within minutes it started filling up again. For some reason the folder keeps filling up with .tmp files. They all seem to be around 89 megs.

What is causing this and how do I put a stop to it?

[Izzy]

I really don't know.

I can only guess that perhaps you have a virus or some other malware running - have you done a virus scan lately?

Try reboot the computer and see if it starts again.

[sharpnova]

virus or malware is a very high possibility. i haven't been very careful with this machine lately. been doing a lot of intricate developement work that requires me to download strange utilities from time to time.

i'll do a format tonight and see if the problem persists.

[Izzy]

To add to your toolkit I highly recommend these 2 free Anti-malware offerings plus a free firewall that I use and found to be of the highest standards.

Avira anti-virus free version:
http://www.free-av.de/en/index.html

For spyware plus other goodies try free SpyBot Search and Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

Both are free and both have auto update facility and both do their job well and are of course multilingual.

I recommend you do a malware scan before a format just to see if anything comes up.


To cap it all off one of the very best firewalls is the free offering from Comodo the SSL certificate people - don't select the pro version as it is $$$, the free version does all that most people will ever need.
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/