Rainmeter.exe?

[mak_kawa]

I can't find any information about this in Rainmeter Documents and Forums. If I am missing something, sorry.

What is the C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.exe?? This is with hidden attribute and very small file size (4608 bytes). If I deleted this file, nothing happens. And when Rainmeter executes, the Rainmeter.exe is recreated by someone, maybe "authentic" Rainmeter.exe...?!

Possibly I don't have to care about this file, but I still can't stop to care about.

[mak_kawa]

Hi dvo

Ah...no, I have never done editing/opening ini file via Explorer.
Now I deleted that hidden Rainmeter.exe and exit -> restart Rainmeter with batch command.

Code: Select all

taskkill /f /im rainmeter.exe
start "" "C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.exe"

The small Rainmeter.exe is recreated at the moment when second line of batch command executed.

Maybe, someone of Rainmeter dev team will say "Don't care about it!!"

[Brian]

I can't find any information about this in Rainmeter Documents and Forums. If I am missing something, sorry.

What is the C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.exe?? This is with hidden attribute and very small file size (4608 bytes). If I deleted this file, nothing happens. And when Rainmeter executes, the Rainmeter.exe is recreated by someone, maybe "authentic" Rainmeter.exe...?!

Possibly I don't have to care about this file, but I still can't stop to care about.

Rainmeter.exe located in the AppData folder is necessary for some older addons that needed to communicate with the main Rainmeter process. It basically forwards any commands to the main Rainmeter process (located in the Program Files folder).

In the past, Windows would allow users write access to the Program Files folder where all your installed programs are located. This is where Rainmeter used to store all the settings, layouts and addons. For better security, later versions of Windows now remove write access to these "protected" folders in order to stop malware from overwriting programs.

When Microsoft changed the location to where settings *should* be stored (in AppData), some older addons for Rainmeter no longer worked since they assumed the main Rainmeter.exe process was located in a parent folder from where the addon exe was. So we created this executable to just forward commands from the addon exe to the main Rainmeter.exe process (in Program Files).

I hope that makes sense.

-Brian

PS - If anyone is curious to how this process is created and what is contained in it, the source code is here: https://github.com/rainmeter/rainmeter/blob/master/Library/Rainmeter.cpp#L799-L825

[mak_kawa]

Hi Brian

Thank you for adequate and detailed explanation. Now I understood about the "small" Rainmeter.exe in the Appdata folder. I have stopped to care about it.