Tifu wrote:Roger Wilco Jr wrote:Have you tried clearing your Internet Explorer cache? The launcher uses it even if you don't.
If that works, thank JohnLuke.

I"ll try clearing that , didn't realize the launcher even uses IE !

Any and all browser functionality of any Win32 (and newer Win64) program built by Visual Studio 97 and later (basically all software in Windows since 1997) uses the proprietary "Trident" engine -- basically MS IE 4.0 or later, although the "Trident" user-string didn't come about until mid-release 7.x of MS IE, largely related to the Windows "N" release (EU lawsuit result).
Security Note:► Show Spoiler
While it should be dynamically linked to the OS' libraries, and updated when your MS IE version is updated, because Microsoft has not maintained even proprietary compatibility, older applications often statically link it in -- making many Windows programs a nice, big, client-side exploit engine.
E.g., the Notorious MS IE 6-only web sites, along with v10+ breakage too. I.e., there are MS IE 6-only, as well as MS IE 9-only sites out there. Lots of corporate corporate software based on a specific MSHTML/Trident built by Microsoft's own authoring tools that affixed their creation to those specific MS IE versions.
Off Topic
I kid you not when I had a major customer in 2009 (which most people in the world have heard of) who was fighting the fact that they had a MS IE 6-only corporate intranet, including consumer-facing stores with PC-based Kiosks. The worst part? Back in 2001, people internally argued they should standardize and only generate W3C Internet Standard pages, and use Gecko (Netscape-Mozilla) to validate Internet standards. They also argued that they should "future-proof" their investment by testing all code against Linux-based devices, which were becoming popular for everything from ATM and Consumer Kiosks to Thin Terminals to early Tablets -- yes, years before Apple (Cyrix produced several -- heard even Gates himself stormed off at a consumer show in 2000 seeing one, and found out it was running Linux, instead of Microsoft's swiped Pen Computing tools) at the time.
The MS Edge browser uses an engine, EdgeHTML, that is a fork of Trident/MSHTML that exorcises the crap, and utterly focuses more on speed, Internet standards and security. Unfortunately it doesn't solve the application/OS tie-in, not even in Windows 10. However, Windows 10 uses MS Edge by default, so what you browse on the Internet is not tied directly into the OS' stack, as the EdgeHTML engine is segmented from the OS' Trident/MSHTML.
It's the best move Microsoft has made in a long time, and is faster than Google Chrome in many benchmarks.
You can change the location of your MS IE Temporary files by modifying the user's TEMP and TMP variables.
For those a using NAND storage device (commodity SSD), I highly recommend you set both your system and user TMP and TEMP environment (yes, both variables, and for both Windows
'SYSTEM' user and each user-specific) to a platter storage device or, if you don't have one, consider setting up part of your RAM as a
RAM drive with various software for Windows.
Performance/Longevity Note:► Show Spoiler
Windows lack of separation of temp/variable files from static binaries and user data, let alone the FAT-based storage approach, is notoriously destructive on NAND, using up to 200x as many commits as actual data. I.e., this why NAND devices die well before they should on Windows, and are nothing like the "perfect block sizes" that enthusiast sites test and say should last decades. That's why I have a D:\TMP (with .\Windows, .\bjsmith, etc...) that is platter ... or RAM disk if I lack a platter. Drastically cuts down on NAND utilization, beyond the fact that my Windows swap file is there as well ... no Windows swap file at all if I don't have a platter.
Windows Update is the worst, writing 200x more to disk than actually is updated (numerous, real-world tests of mine). E.g., given 5GiB of updates in a year for typical MS Windows + MS Office, expect at least 1TiB of the life expectancy of your NAND to be exhausted. I used to always put C:\Windows on platter, but because Windows Update (let alone installing) is so slow on platter, even I've given into using a small (127GiB) C: drive just for Windows -- I cannot find an alternative platter/RAMdisk for Windows Update (it doesn't use system TEMP/TMP) -- I just give in.
With the price of 240GB NAND devices today, I can afford to throw them away every 1-2 years, as long as I ensure I have a regularly backup copy of that 127GiB C: drive.
By moving, corralling and otherwise restricting your TMP/TEMP, you will limit how much MS IE will use as well.
And in the case of a RAM disk, it's gone the next time you boot (or crash). That may cause issues with a few, vertical applications (e.g., often corporate programs) that expect it to be persistent, but shouldn't be an issue on a gaming system. In fact, it will solve a lot of issues with a reboot ... like this.
