Dangerous deletion events Photoshop CC - MachinePrefs.psp

Hi,
I was trying out Photoshop CC and discovered it has a dangerous tendency of deleting certain folders (or sometimes only their content) on my computers when the "MachinePrefs.psp" file is missing from the AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC\Adobe Photoshop CC Settings folder.
The MachinePrefs.psp file is where the scratch disc drive is designated. If, for some reason, this file is missing, or no scratch disc is expressely designated in the MachinePrefs.psp file, it will delete the contents of any 'first' (alphabetically) folder both relative to the location Photoshop is installed in, and the first folder on the C:\ drive. This doesn't happen to folders protected by the system, so it won't happen to the first folder in Program Files or any such location (well, on Windows 8, that is). But if you have a custom folder on C:\ and run Photoshop without the MachinePrefs.psp file (or with the file but no scratch disc designated), it will delete that folder on C:\. For example, I created C:\appie. When I ran Photoshop from a custom location outside system folders, and then exited Photoshop, C:\appie got deleted!
Normally, when you install Photoshop CC it will create the MachinePrefs.psp file and in the .psp file it will designate C:\ as the scratch disc. When MachinePrefs.psp gets deleted somehow, and you run Photoshop, it re-creates MachinePrefs.psp. But, when it does, even though under Preferences it will say "default(C)", the selection box will not actually be selected, and inside the psp file it will not list C:\ as the scratch disc location (can be checked with Notepad). If I then run Photoshop (I've been running it from a non-default install location -- not in Program Files), it will delete the (alphabetically) first neighbor-folder or its contents. To clarify, I might have a folder called "my apps" on C:\ and it has app folders in it:
C:\my apps\7-Zip
C:\my apps\Adobe Photoshop\Photoshop.exe
C:\my apps\Defraggler
(etc.)
Now, when I run Photoshop.exe without the MachinePrefs.psp (or without the scratch disc properly designated in the automatically re-created .psp file) and close Photoshop, it deletes the contents of C:\my apps\7-Zip folder! (Or any other folder that happens to be alphabetically first in the 'my apps' folder.)
OK, if, at the same time, I have another alphabetically first folder on the root of C:\ (so one directory up) -- for example I had a security monitoring app installed to C:\dvr -- it will delete that entire folder as well upon exiting Photoshop! So what it is doing is consistently deleting any first folder relative to the Photoshop.exe location, as well as any first folder on the root of the drive it is on. No way should an absent or improperly configured .psp file make Photoshop delete any folder of file at all!
So this is a major bug and a very, very dangerous one. I have confirmed this to be the case on both Windows 7 and Windows 8, both with and without UAC enabled, etc. When I performed system snapshots I was able to tell that Photoshop creates a temp file, which, upon exiting Photoshop gets deleted. It seems that, along with the deletion of this temp file, those 'first folders' on C:\ and the root folder in which the Photoshop app folder sits, get wiped too.
Please look into this bug. I have tested CS6 and earlier to make sure it is not contingent on the MachinePrefs.psp file only, and it is not deleting anything with earlier version of Photoshop. Only Photoshop CC/CS7 is doing it and it is doing it consistenly over several test machines.
Thank you.

Here is a snapshot of a PS CC install causing the deletion event on a freshly installed system, when the MachinePrefs.psp is deleted or not properly created:
// Snapshots Comparation (C:\mypps\System.Explorer\snapshots\2013_08_25
[Upon closing Photoshop CC, when MachinePrefs.psp is deleted or corrupt, the following happens (abridged):]
Dir    Added    C:\Users\dobby\AppData\Local\Temp\lilo.3968
File    Added    C:\Users\dobby\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC\Adobe Photoshop CC Settings\MachinePrefs.psp
Dir    Deleted    C:\Users\dobby\AppData\Local\Temp\lilo.3180
Dir    Deleted    C:\hiha     [This is a folder I created, alphabetically first, on C:\. As can be seen, it got deleted after closing Photoshop.]
File    Deleted    C:\hiha\contents.txt
Dir    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip     [This is 7-Zip installed in the same folder as Photoshop; it precedes the PS folder alphabetically and it got deleted.]
Dir    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\Lang
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\Lang\de.txt
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\Lang\en.ttt
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\Lang\es.txt
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\Lang\fr.txt
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\Lang\it.txt
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\Lang\nl.txt
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7-zip.chm
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7-zip.dll
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7-zip32.dll
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7z.dll
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7z.exe
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7z.sfx
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7zCon.sfx
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7zFM.exe
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\7zG.exe
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\History.txt
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\License.txt
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\descript.ion
File    Deleted    C:\myapps\7-Zip\readme.txt
It has nothing to do with system peculiarities. This is consistent over several testing beds.
If I had to argue this issue from a standpoint of reason, as you do, I certainly would not have come up with anything like this either. But this is not a thing of reason, it is a bug. Hence, repeating what it should do or however many times something has been tested, will not help in this case. What would help is if someone would repeat the process and find it out for themselves as well (validate it). Based on reason and probability I would perhaps say the same thing you have. But what I'm trying to show here is a little more than a hunch and a little more than the peculiarities of any one system. I think I have done that rather exhaustively. What is needed now is to reproduce it and fix the bug. Adobe fixes many bugs in incremental releases, so it shouldn't be a surprise if indeed something like this happens.
There is no third-party utility involved, and no plugin. It would be hard to get a more pristine and up to date Windows install than the ones that stem from my sysprep and capture sessions

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