Purpose of FXSAPIDebugLogFile.txt in Windows 7 temp folder?

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Many Windows 7 systems have the file FXSAPIDebugLogFile.txt in a temp folder.

The file cannot easily be deleted while Windows is running. When trying to delete the file using standard procedures, Windows claims the file is "open in Windows Explorer". This is interesting because when trying to delete FXSTIFFDebugLogFile.txt in the same temp folders, Windows indicates that file is open by a different process: "print driver host".

Researching the purpose of FXSAPIDebugLogFile.txt yields conflicting and incomplete information.

What process is actually creating this file, and what are the consequences of disabling that process?

Every time I have seen a system with that file, it is zero bytes. Does it ever contain data? If so, what data?

This question involves better understanding the system; leaving the file alone is typical.

RockPaperLizard

Posted 2016-09-30T09:24:24.230

Reputation: 5 415

Answers

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It would appear to be a debug log file for Windows Fax Print services. If you do not fax or print the file will stay empty other than that it does absolutely nothing. Network administrators usually get rid of the file. Or atleast I do.

You can remove it however by just disabling the Print and Document Services in the windows feature panel.

Dylan Rz

Posted 2016-09-30T09:24:24.230

Reputation: 658

Thanks Dylan. When printing, I have never seen the file contain any data. Do you know what Print and Document Services writes to that file? – RockPaperLizard – 2016-09-30T09:48:31.463

@RockPaperLizard To be honest I have never seen anything ever written to it. But I assume sinds its a debug log, it logs the error output if a fax or print fails in some form of way. It will not log things like if a print fails to connect to the printer. But more like if the fax or print has an incorrect format or extension that the printer cant handle. Other errors would be provided towards the mail server instead. In windows 10 this file is actually removed sinds I have never seen it on any win10 machine. – Dylan Rz – 2016-09-30T09:52:04.047

Thanks. The results of a little test: running out of paper does not cause anything to be written to that file. – RockPaperLizard – 2016-09-30T10:03:06.377

@RockPaperLizard It will probably only occur when there are missing .dll files. Nothing hardware or even network related. So in a sense it has nothing to do with printing at all. but more windows itself. – Dylan Rz – 2016-09-30T10:06:12.777

@Dylan Rz I got a Windows 10 laptop for xmas. This file did not exist until a few weeks ago. I wonder if there was some problem or an update that did it. Explorer.exe has it open. I can delete the file if I kill Explorer.exe first. But on the next boot it is back. – Marichyasana – 2017-07-21T05:28:16.540

Asked: 2016-09-30T09:24:24.230

Viewed: 7 923 times

Active: 2016-09-30T09:47:35.497