I solved the problem myself by editing the EditorWindow.py file where it sets self.recent_files_path by setting it to a different file location (I created a file in my Python31 directory named recent-files.lst and then set the recent_files_path to the absolute path to this file I made). This seems to be working so far and works like a complete work around the .idlerc folder issue. Will report if this doesn't work out later