Flash Player is creating thousands of .tmp files

We have seen a number of machines in our environment (XP Pro SP3) that have been running out of disk space because of .TMP files in the windows\temp folder. One machine had 6GB of .TMP files on it starting from around August 2010.

The files are all 305kb in size and they seem to get created every 10 minutes. The files appear to be either .EXEs or .DLLs when opened in a hex editor. The words "this program can not be run in DOS mode" are at the beginning of the file and the words "Adobe Flash Player" are scattered all over the end of the file (probably the string table).

While it's easy enough to clean them up, I'd like to find root cause for the issue.

Has anybody else seen this?

Ed Manet

Posted 2011-01-17T15:44:01.700

Reputation: 369

Do your users run web-based applications? Do they leave their browsers running all the time? Do any of the web-based applications or commonly-used sites include Flash animations? – boot13 – 2012-07-26T14:02:41.997

Answers

You can block/control specific instances of memory usage, such as for Flash Player, via extensions (addons) or configuration options.

Flash images in particular are pervasive in modern web pages (as ads, videos, etc) and so are a common source of memory usage.

Check for viruses/malware
Update your Adobe Flash Player on every machine
If you use Internet Explorer 8, try to update patches.
If you're using Firefox you can:
- Reduce Adobe Reader memory usage
- Reduce Shockwave memory usage
- Reduce Flash memory usage
- Reduce Java memory usage
If you're using Firefox use the BetterPrivacy addon due to Dom Storage files that are created.

Denja

Posted 2011-01-17T15:44:01.700

Reputation: 578

1We are using IE6 and IE8 in this environment, we have enterprise level anti-virus software, update Adobe Flash every time they release a new version and deploy the Microsoft Security Updates every month on Patch Tuesday. – Ed Manet – 2011-01-17T18:45:56.300