How to move the temporary files location for Windows XP CD recording

This article describes how to move the CD Recording temporary files storage to an alternate drive for a single user on a Windows XP-based computer.

Note Generally it is better to free disk space on the Windows drive before you try to move the CD Recording temporary files. If you can free enough disk space, you may not have to follow the steps in this article. For additional information about how to use Disk Cleanup to free hard disk space, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

When you copy files to a CD-R or CD-RW disk by using the CD recording support that is built into Windows XP, the files are first copied to a temporary location, and then a disk image file is created. Because of this, you must have available space on your Windows drive that equals two times the size of the files you are copying.

Although you can move the location of the temporary image on the properties of the CD-R/RW drive, this method does not move the temporary files.

For more information about moving the disk image file, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Moving the temporary files location requires unpartitioned disk space, and Windows must be installed on an NTFS partition. If Windows is installed to a FAT or FAT32 partition, you can convert to NTFS.

Warning If you have upgraded from Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Me to Windows XP and convert your drive to NTFS, you will no longer be able to uninstall Windows XP.

For more information about how to convert a drive to NTFS, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

How to Move the Temporary Files Location

1. Log on to the computer as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Insert a blank CD-R disk in the drive, and then open the CD-R or CD-RW drive in Windows Explorer. Delete any files that are waiting to be written to a CD.
3. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
4. Type set, and then press ENTER to list the environment variables. Make a note the current path that is listed for the USERPROFILE variable.
5. Click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management.
6. Click Disk Management, and then locate unallocated disk space on the drive where you want to place the temporary files. Right-click this space, and then click New Partition.
7. In the New Partition Wizard, click Next, and then click Next again to create a primary partition.
8. Make the partition at least 700 megabytes (MB) in size to enable you to create CDs of the largest-currently-supported size, and then click Next.
9. Instead of assigning a drive letter, mount the drive to the following path:
   user profile\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CD Burning
   Where user profile is the path for the user profile you previously noted. Click Next.
10. Accept the default file system (NTFS), type a volume label if you want to, and then click Next.
11. Click Finish to create the partition.

Now, when you send files to be written to a CD-R or CD-RW disk, they will be copied as temporary files to the newly-created partition, instead of the Windows drive.

Note Only the user account that followed the preceding procedure will have the benefit of using the temporary space on the newly-created partition. When other users on the computer send files to be written to a CD-R or CD-RW disk, the temporary files will still be stored on the Windows drive in their user profile path.

Microsoft Platforms Support does not support the installation or use of the TweakUI tool. TweakUI contains a feature to move the temporary files location for CD-ROM burning in Windows XP. For more information about TweakUI and other unsupported Power Toys for Windows XP, visit the following Microsoft web site: