Completely Erasing files from "Temporary Internet Files" folder in IE6

[Bob S]

I use IE 6 and have 2 questions.

1. Is it true that when one has IE 6 open and clicks Tools\Internet
Options\Delete Files it removes them from the folder "Temporary Internet
Files" but does not competely erase them from your hard drive nor does it
put them in the Recycle Bin?
2. Is there a way to get IE6 to either erase the files completely (writing
over it several times) or more likely placing the files in the recycle bin
so that can be done within the recycle bin?

If the answer to #1 is yes, but the answer to #2 is no, is it safe to use a
3rd party program (like Heidi's "Eraser") (after closing IE6) to manually
completely erase all of the files in "Temporary Internet Settings"?

Thanks for your help, in advance.
Bob

 

[Gary Smith]

Responses below.

I use IE 6 and have 2 questions.

1. Is it true that when one has IE 6 open and clicks Tools\Internet
Options\Delete Files it removes them from the folder "Temporary Internet
Files" but does not competely erase them from your hard drive nor does it
put them in the Recycle Bin?
True

2. Is there a way to get IE6 to either erase the files completely (writing
over it several times) or more likely placing the files in the recycle bin
so that can be done within the recycle bin?

No, and putting them into the recycle bin may very well result in two
copies of the data on the disk, one logically deleted but not gone, just
as if you'd used the IE Delete Files option.

If the answer to #1 is yes, but the answer to #2 is no, is it safe to use a
3rd party program (like Heidi's "Eraser") (after closing IE6) to manually
completely erase all of the files in "Temporary Internet Settings"?

Probably, assuming that the eraser program itself has no problems. When
IE is closed, anything in the TIF can be deleted or erased without causing
problems. For a thorough cleanup, you'll want to delete the index.dat
file in Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5, but if you're running
Windows 2000 od XP, you'll need to log on as a different user with
administrator rights. You can't delete index.dat for the currently
logged-on user because it's always busy..

 

[Bob S]

Thanks Gary.

I am running XP-Media Center. And I do understand signing in as
administrator to erase index.dat because it is always busy. However, I am
confused a bit. I find Temporary Internet Files\Content IE5\index.dat only
under administrator and under default user, not under my name. Is there
something wrong, or is the index.dat you are talking about one of the two I
mentioned above. Thank you for your help.
Bob

 

[Gary Smith]

Are you logging in as Administrator, or are you using a renamed
Administrator account? There should be a Temporary Internet Files folder
for those accounts that have been logged on to, and only for those
accounts. Having one under default user is extrememly peculiar because
there's no account by that name. The default usre account normally exists
only for initialization of new acccounts.

It's possible though, that Windows Explorer prevents you from seeing
the actual files present in Content.IE5 as it will in the TIF folder
itself by presenting a special view instead. That doesn't happen on my
system, but I'm running Win2K and may have tweaked the standard settings.
If you're seeing a standard view of Content.IE5, you shuold see
desktop.ini, index.dat, and anywhere from one to eight folders with
randomly-generated names like 8DCZO3WN.

 

[Bob S]

I am not logged on as "Administrator". I have in the past done so at least
once, and my named account was constructed from scratch (not by renaming the
administrator account) with administrator privileges.

Here is what I see.
Under Documents and Settings\name I see Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files with many files in it but no Content
IE5 folder.
Under Documents and Settings\Administrator I see Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files.with nothing in it except the Content IE5
folder.
Under Documents and Settings\default user I see Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files.with nothing in it except the Content IE5
folder.
Under Documents and Settings\All Users I see not even a Local
Settings

Both Content IE5 folders have only one file in them, namely index.dat.

Under folder options\view I do have a check beside "show hidden files and
folders" and do not have a check next to "hide extensions for known file
types".

My questions:
1. Should I delete the folder and subfolders for "default user"?
2. Should I have a Content IE5 under my name TIF?
3. Should I also see desktop.ini, index.dat, and anywhere from one to eight
folders with randomly-generated names like 8DCZO3WN.in the Content IE5
folder?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Bob S]

Two other points that may help:

When I go to Settings\Control Panel\User Accounts, I find only two accounts
listed. One is my named account, and the other is Guest Account. The Guest
Account is currently turned "Off".
Bob

 

[Gary Smith]

Under Folder Options, do you also have "Hide protected operating system
files ..." (name may be slightly different in XP) unchecked? Some of
these folders have the System attribute, and those are hidden when this
option is checked. I always recommend that everyone, regardless of their
level of technical expertise, always show file extensions, hidden files,
and "protected" operating system files. Having Windows hide stuff from
you is never helpful.

The issue is complicated by the fact that Explorer hides the contents of
some folders and displays something else instead. This is true of
Temporary Internet Files and some of the folders subordinate to it. If
you remove the System attribute from the TIF folder, you'll find that
there's nothing actually in there other than the Content.IE5 folder and
desktop.ini.

Once you can see and navigate into Content.IE5, you should find
desktop.ini, index.dat, and usually one or mor of the randomly-named
folders I mentioned before. Those folders hold the actual temporary
files, not all of which are stored by IE and not all of which are deleted
automatically. You can usually get rid of everything by going to the
General tab of Internet Options, clicking "Delete Files", and checking
"Delete all offline content" before clicking OK. That should delete all
of the subfolders from Cntent.IE5, leaving only the two control files.

The special display works only for your own folders, which probably
explains why yu can see Content.IE5 in the other profiles but not in your
own. I think you should be able to see it in the folder tree if you
expand TIF.

As far as deleting things goes, neither All Users nor Default User need a
TIF folder, so you can delete them. Deleting TIF for any user other than
the current user never causes a problem. If Windows decides the folder is
necessary, it will happily create a new one. Also, deleting index.dat is
the only way to get rid of certain kinds of corruption or to reduce the
size of the file, while will apparently grow without limit as it's used.

I am not logged on as "Administrator". I have in the past done so at least
once, and my named account was constructed from scratch (not by renaming the
administrator account) with administrator privileges.

Here is what I see.
Under Documents and Settings\name I see Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files with many files in it but no Content
IE5 folder.
Under Documents and Settings\Administrator I see Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files.with nothing in it except the Content IE5
folder.
Under Documents and Settings\default user I see Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files.with nothing in it except the Content IE5
folder.
Under Documents and Settings\All Users I see not even a Local
Settings

Both Content IE5 folders have only one file in them, namely index.dat.

Under folder options\view I do have a check beside "show hidden files and
folders" and do not have a check next to "hide extensions for known file
types".

My questions:
1. Should I delete the folder and subfolders for "default user"?
2. Should I have a Content IE5 under my name TIF?
3. Should I also see desktop.ini, index.dat, and anywhere from one to eight
folders with randomly-generated names like 8DCZO3WN.in the Content IE5
folder?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Bob S]

Gary, thanks for all of your help. Here are some answers to your questions.
1. Under Folder Options, I did not have "Hide protected operating system
files ..." unchecked. But I have not unchecked it. Thanks, I agree with
you.
2. I can see TIF under name\Local Setting. But I cannot see any Content IE5
folder underneath it.
3. When I right-clicked TIF and chose properties, I did not find an
attribute for TIF. I did find that it was Read Only
4. After I changed that, it did NOT make it possible to see Content IE5
underneath TIF.

What I am beginning to wonder is whether I acccidently deleted the Content
IE5 folder. Is that possible? Is there a way to get it back?

Thanks again for your help.

Bob

 

[Gary Smith]

I assume you meant "But I have *now* unchecked it."

I've just had a chance to experiment on an XP Home system, and it seems
that the content of the TIF folder is hidden from the current user
regardless of any view settings in effect. It has to be there, because IE
creates it if necessary when it starts up. Furthermore, you can't delete
the folder for the current user because the index.dat file is always busy.

Try this:

1. Open a command prompt window (Start > Run, type "cmd", click OK. The
window should come up with a prompt something like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\YourProfileName>

("YourProfileName" may be "Owner", depending on how your system was set
up.)

If the prompt is different, enter the command

cd C:\Documents and Settings\YourProfileName

2. Now navigate to the TIF folder by entering the commands

cd Local Settings
cd Temporary Internet Files

3. Next, enter the command

dir /a

You should see something like this:

Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\{ProfileName}\Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files

02/17/2006 01:18 <DIR> .
02/17/2006 01:18 <DIR> ..
08/05/2006 23:52 <DIR> Content.IE5
02/17/2006 01:18 67 desktop.ini
1 File(s) 67 bytes
3 Dir(s) 20,248,297,472 bytes free

Gary, thanks for all of your help. Here are some answers to your questions.
1. Under Folder Options, I did not have "Hide protected operating system
files ..." unchecked. But I have not unchecked it. Thanks, I agree with
you.
2. I can see TIF under name\Local Setting. But I cannot see any Content IE5
folder underneath it.
3. When I right-clicked TIF and chose properties, I did not find an
attribute for TIF. I did find that it was Read Only
4. After I changed that, it did NOT make it possible to see Content IE5
underneath TIF.

What I am beginning to wonder is whether I acccidently deleted the Content
IE5 folder. Is that possible? Is there a way to get it back?

Thanks again for your help.

Bob

 

[Bob S]

You are absolutely right. I did mean "But I have *now* unchecked it."

Your plan worked beautifully as well. It was so clear, concise and
thorough. I did not know about using dir /a to see hidden folders, or
perhaps I had forgotten it since my DOS days. It did indeed show the
Content.IE5 directory, which had an index.dat file of several MB. After
deleting it from my administrator account and letting IE recreate it, it is
now less than 1K. Thanks for your help.

I have one last question to clarify a few things that I think you said
earlier.
As long as there is nothing wrong with the third-party program "Eraser"
which permanently erases files from your computer, would you say that it
would be fine to log on as administrator and erase the entire TIF folder
with all of its subdirectories and their files, and let IE recreate them
when it next loads?

Thanks again for your help.
Bob

 

[Gary Smith]

Excellent! I love it when things work.

It's definitely safe to erase the entire TIF folder using any mechanism
that will do it. I don't usually bother to do that because normally the
only file in there is desktop.ini, but I do regularly delete Content.IE5
from all accounts on my machine. The TIF folder itself didn't exist until
the first time IE was run after the OS was installed, so it makes sense
that you can empty or remove it at any time it's not in use.

By the way, a useful tool to have when investigating stuff like this is a
file manager that doesn't buy in to Windows' "fool the user" concepts.
Servant Salamander is one example, but the one I use most is File Manager
from Windows NT. If you happen to have access to an NT disk, WinFile.exe
and WinFile.hlp are all you need. The interface is ugly and old-fashioned
and it doesn't understand right-clicking, but it gets the job done.

You are absolutely right. I did mean "But I have *now* unchecked it."

Your plan worked beautifully as well. It was so clear, concise and
thorough. I did not know about using dir /a to see hidden folders, or
perhaps I had forgotten it since my DOS days. It did indeed show the
Content.IE5 directory, which had an index.dat file of several MB. After
deleting it from my administrator account and letting IE recreate it, it is
now less than 1K. Thanks for your help.

I have one last question to clarify a few things that I think you said
earlier.
As long as there is nothing wrong with the third-party program "Eraser"
which permanently erases files from your computer, would you say that it
would be fine to log on as administrator and erase the entire TIF folder
with all of its subdirectories and their files, and let IE recreate them
when it next loads?

Thanks again for your help.
Bob

 

[Bob S]

Thank you Gary. You have been very helpful.

Excellent! I love it when things work.

It's definitely safe to erase the entire TIF folder using any mechanism
that will do it. I don't usually bother to do that because normally the
only file in there is desktop.ini, but I do regularly delete Content.IE5
from all accounts on my machine. The TIF folder itself didn't exist until
the first time IE was run after the OS was installed, so it makes sense
that you can empty or remove it at any time it's not in use.

By the way, a useful tool to have when investigating stuff like this is a
file manager that doesn't buy in to Windows' "fool the user" concepts.
Servant Salamander is one example, but the one I use most is File Manager
from Windows NT. If you happen to have access to an NT disk, WinFile.exe
and WinFile.hlp are all you need. The interface is ugly and old-fashioned
and it doesn't understand right-clicking, but it gets the job done.