I’ve mentioned before that I have a much easier time watching my cats while traveling using Webcam XP’s FTP upload. On the FTP host server I’ve created a PHP program to sort the photos and display them in a web page, so i can see them from any browser, and then hit a control button to delete them. The trouble I’ve had is that quite often the photo files on the computer never get deleted. I’ve traced and discovered that all FTP photos (on an XP machine) end up in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users.WINDOWS\Application Data\ webcamXP 5FTP.Queue, and nothing I change on the program options changes that. I don’t really mind where the photos get stored, but I think you told me before that the program should be deleting them. Is there a hidden setting i can use to fix this? The problem is that if the files don’t get deleted, they end up getting re-uploaded again and again. Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve tried setting the “delete after” in the motion detector settings to both 1 (hour) and 0.
Hi,
Sorry for this answer. The developer have read your post. This is an old program that is not developed anymore also running on Windows XP which also is old. We have not had this problem before and he cannot see where it comes from. So we cannot do anything about this. My reference was to Netcam Studio which is our main program and developed.
-Henrik
Thanks anyway. Its been an economical solution to use USB cameras with old XP machines and laptops, to monitor multiple areas. And when I consider the many years of use I’ve gotten out of this program, I really can’t complain. So it may be time to look at an upgrade to netcam Studio, and if that program won’t run on XP, maybe I can at least load Windows 7 on some of these machines.
As for my problem, the files seem to get uploaded pretty quickly, so I can develop a simple program to delete whatever is left behind, until I can upgrade to a newer version of your product.
Hi,
Thanks for more info. Since you use USB cameras and if they are of the same brand and model Netcam Studio will not work with that. Netcam Studio focus on IP cameras and if the USB cameras use the same driver it will not work.
Since the computers seems to be rather old as well I suggest that you install Windows 7 and install WebcamXP and test. Many things can happen in the process and maybe the problem is solved with a new OS. Have you tested to do the classic way to uninstall WebcamXP completely and install it again. Sometimes that works 
-Henrik
Oh I am disappointed netcam studio wouldn’t work with our existing cameras! New IP cameras would be a significant investment for us, so we’ll have to make do for now.
We actually do have one Windows 7 machine, which though quite old too, is a pretty robust machine. But on this last trip, it also became non-functional. I have, however, traced what I believe is part of the problem (maybe ALL of the problem). You may want to let your developers know to at least plan for this situation, because it seems like something easy to miss while debugging new code. I mentioned that I’ve been using the FTP upload. Since I use this program to watch pets in addition to obvious security, there are bound to be hundreds of photos uploaded during the course of a day. Sometimes over 1000! So the thing you may need to plan for is the situation where the FTP server (receiving the photos) is beginning to fail.
This happened to me because my hosting company “upgraded” some things, and in the process changed the FTP account quotas, and the number of simultaneous connections allowed. Since I may only check and delete uploaded photos once a day, the limited quota filled up, so that no more FTP uploads were being accepted.
Now, having watched Webcam’s FTP.Queue directories on my machines, it seems that older files get deleted AFTER a successful FTP upload. So if the FTP transfers are continually failing, and there are thousands of photos building up in the FTP.Queue directory, they never get deleted and program eventually chokes. Again, I can see where that would be an easy condition to forget to test for. Now that I’ve set my FTP account to an unlimited quota, I’m not seeing the issue happen. But if this question ever comes up again in any of your products, you may want to tell the users to check for this condition.
Anyway, thanks for all the support all these years on WebcamXP.
Hi!
Thanks a lot for the excellent investigation and explanation!
Your situation is very tricky since it “never” happens. I put it on my list and try to remember when it comes up next time
Thanks,
Henrik