The Geek recently published a method of trapping downloaded flash files in temp folders and saving them. But it was Linux specific. I have some clips hiding somewhere on my HDD that I would like to save. But darned if I can find them and wouldn't know what to do with them if I did, in vista. I know they are there, because I can visit the original website and play them without waiting for download. Anbody know how to smoke those little buggers out and preserve them for winter?

Spacegold, I would suggest that you use a utility to grab flash files. There are stand-alone programs that will do it, most download managers will, and there are even Firefox add-ons that will.

As for the ones that are already somewhere on your drive, try a search on *.flv, as whs suggests. However, there are other file extensions that can be used by flash, other containers, and streaming media data which won't show up on that search. Better to download them again with a flash grabber if you can.

EDIT: more about flash video - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Video