SABnzbd Forums

I'm getting this warning message in Sabnzbd 4.2.1:

Network path "z:\Temp\Incomplete" should not be used here
To prevent all helpful warnings, disable Special setting 'helpful_warnings'.

Well, this is not a "helpful" warning, as I have no idea why z:\Temp\Incomplete should not be by temporary folder.

I have also tried to disable the warning by turning helpful_warnings off in special settings and restarting Sabnzbd,
but the warning persists (I've checked twice, helpful_warnings setting is set to off).

Because it's a network path, and network paths are generally (99% of cases) not fast enough to support the higher load of simultaneous reads/writes that is performed on the incomplete path.
This warning is there to prevent users from indicating that their SABnzbd performance is slower than they expect.

You are indeed right that disabling helpful_warnings doesn't work here. It seems that the network-check is performed before we read the helpful_warnings config value.
I will fix that for 4.2.2.

The OP is correct, the message should say why it shouldn't be used.

In my case, sabnzbd runs on a VM and the network path is on its hypervisor - there's been no performance issue, so I don't need to see that warning, but I might want to see other helpful warnings and so I'm stuck with either seeing this misleading warning message or not seeing any helpful warnings.

Your situation is not a regular one, for the vast majority of the users that set a network path it will actually hurt their performance.
And then they come to complain on forums/Reddit/Discord.
The message just says "should not", it doesn't block it.