I know that all programs make and save prefs in the prefs folder which is why I explained myself in my first post. I was only defeating your comment about cocothumb not writing *any* files, which it does obviously. but thats not the problem.

the problem is that when running cocothumb it deletes random or seemingly random other pref files in my usr prefs folder. I know this is cocothumb's doing because nothing else is running and nothing else I have is new or causes this. this is definitely a problem with this software. and yes it is still present in this new version. the list would be too long to write in here of all the deleted files it got on my first machine and I'm certainly NOT going to run cocothumb again to see the problems again. I know it wiped out many folders [which were not just sent to the trash; they were completely erased and unrecoverable]. it tossed my adobe folder, some other shareware vendors pref files and mariner write's prefs to be specific. and thats just for starters.

I would still for sure NOT recommend this prog to anyone until this is figured out and the developer stops denying it and fixes it.