This new version brings important changes and fixes.
As some users noticed, using a junction on the C: drive pointing to the Temp folder of a ramdisk is enough to fix some MSI installers. I recently had the opportunity to check that.
A junction is like a symbolic link, that is, a shortcut created at the file system level. An example is "C:\Documents and Settings" that points to "C:\Users" (Vista and later).
As creating a junction may be difficult for some beginners, RamDiskUI now allows creating a junction while setting the Temp environment variables, with only a few clicks.
To avoid issues with files in use and non-empty folders, the junction is created at a different place than the default Temp folder of the user profil. That is, by default: "C:\ProgramData\Temp" instead of "C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Local\Temp".
Right after the junction is created, the Temp variables are automatically set to the junction.
There is also a critical fix for the ramdisk synchronization tool. If the option "Delete data removed from the RamDisk" is checked, files could be deleted on the hard drive at system shutdown if they was not properly copied at startup. This could occur for instance if the selected folder is bigger than the ramdisk, or if the system shutdown begins before the end of the file copy to the ramdisk.
Now, no file will be deleted if the copy is not properly finished.
I also added an option in the installer to create the shortcuts for all users instead of the current user.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Unfortunately, I think new symbolic link aka "junction" option causes problems to some software too. At least I encountered error in Firefox (v93 at the time of writing).
There's mechanism, when you choose "Open" in download popup, Firefox actually downloads file in temp folder and then opens it from there. When I use symbolic link method, such download fails. I can see that there is downloaded data in real temp folder on ram disk, the file have .part extension, but for some reason Firefox can't rename it to real file (which stays empty size there too). After I switched to older method (env variables direct to ram disk), I can open files from Firefox without problem.
I don't know where Firefox stores log files and the message in download dialog says just "Failed", so I can not say real reason what's happening behind curtains.
Thanks in advance.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
This new version brings important changes and fixes.
As some users noticed, using a junction on the C: drive pointing to the Temp folder of a ramdisk is enough to fix some MSI installers. I recently had the opportunity to check that.
A junction is like a symbolic link, that is, a shortcut created at the file system level. An example is "C:\Documents and Settings" that points to "C:\Users" (Vista and later).
As creating a junction may be difficult for some beginners, RamDiskUI now allows creating a junction while setting the Temp environment variables, with only a few clicks.
To avoid issues with files in use and non-empty folders, the junction is created at a different place than the default Temp folder of the user profil. That is, by default: "C:\ProgramData\Temp" instead of "C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Local\Temp".
Right after the junction is created, the Temp variables are automatically set to the junction.
There is also a critical fix for the ramdisk synchronization tool. If the option "Delete data removed from the RamDisk" is checked, files could be deleted on the hard drive at system shutdown if they was not properly copied at startup. This could occur for instance if the selected folder is bigger than the ramdisk, or if the system shutdown begins before the end of the file copy to the ramdisk.
Now, no file will be deleted if the copy is not properly finished.
I also added an option in the installer to create the shortcuts for all users instead of the current user.
Hi! Thank you for the release!
Unfortunately, I think new symbolic link aka "junction" option causes problems to some software too. At least I encountered error in Firefox (v93 at the time of writing).
There's mechanism, when you choose "Open" in download popup, Firefox actually downloads file in temp folder and then opens it from there. When I use symbolic link method, such download fails. I can see that there is downloaded data in real temp folder on ram disk, the file have .part extension, but for some reason Firefox can't rename it to real file (which stays empty size there too). After I switched to older method (env variables direct to ram disk), I can open files from Firefox without problem.
I don't know where Firefox stores log files and the message in download dialog says just "Failed", so I can not say real reason what's happening behind curtains.
Thanks in advance.
Firefox is my main browser. Just made a few checks and yes, it seems the "open with" dialog box does no longer work. I don't use it often...
A workaround can be to start Firefox with a .bat file such as: