#49 Some applications don't work when temporary variables point inside a RAM disk.

[James Russell]

Hi, I have setup RAM disk that's always recreated at startup with user temporary directories pointing to it (i.e., R:\Temp), 8 GB, AWE, dynamic memory. All good for most intents and purposes, but some applications seem to have a hard time working that way.

You can see some error messages that were thrown just some hours ago in the attached screenshots. The current graphic driver installer from Intel states that the application is in an unauthorized location, whatever that is. Also from Intel, their oneAPI compiler package installer complains X MB of space are needed when it was virtually empty.

In both cases I had to move things out of the RAM disk for them to work.

The behavior is similar in a way to what I encountered years ago when Process Hacker was updating and %TEMP% pointed to inside the RAM disk, but I never did file a report back then.

I had asked the developer what the problem was, so I could tell you guys and even though he replied I completely forgot about it. The reply is here, in case it's still relevant (has to do with IOCTLs): https://wj32.org/processhacker/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3419#p10644

Thanks for everything, I hope it's something easy to handle and fix, regards,
James.

[James Russell]

I don't know if devs. are aware of this report, but today I stumbled upon another case that exhibits the same behavior. I had to temporarily switch the temporary environmental variables to a real disk to be able to continue with the installation.

[Andy S Bantly]

Hello, I have experienced this problem first hand. I used directory junctions in Windows to work around issues like this.

If my application lives at c:\program files\application and I really want to run it from the RAM disk, I solve that with Junctions.

Steps:
Make RAM disk
Copy application folder to RAM disk
Rename application folder (poor mans backup)
Make a directory hard link to the folder you just copied
Start using application again

Here's a real example using Notepad++. (Previous steps were to copy c:\program files\Notepad++ to R:\Notepad++ and rename C:\Program Files\Notepad++ to C:\Program Files\Notepad++bak)

C:\Program Files>mklink /J NotePad++ R:\Notepad++
Junction created for NotePad++ <<===>> R:\Notepad++

Now you're mileage may very, I am not an expert in links having just figured this out myself.

Additionally you can remap your tempory files and folders this way as well to completely fool windows. GL!

[Andy S Bantly]