Content.IE5

[kaream]

On a two-user (Alice and Bob) machine running XP, first open My
Computer, and open the Folders tree on the left side of the screen.

Alice opens Drive C: \ Documents and Settings \ Alice \ Local Settings
\ Temporary Internet Files. Here she sees a lot of cookies, but no
subfolders.

She also opens Drive C: \ Documents and Settings \ Bob \ Local Settings
\ Temporary Internet Files. Here she sees no cookies, but does find
two folders, Content.IE5 and OLK2. Looking further, she finds that
while OLK2 is apparently empty, Content.IE5 contains roughly 20 or so
subfolders, each with random 8-character alphanumeric names. And each
of these subfolders contains hundreds of files of all types: css, gif,
htc, htm, jpg, js, php, xml, etc.

Now it's Bob's turn. When he opens Documents and Settings \ Bob \
Local Settings \ Temporary Internet Files, he finds lots of cookies,
but no subfolders. Then he checks out Alice, and finds no cookies, but
he does see Alice's Content.IE5 and its subfolders, with all of Alice's
internet data files.


If I've understood them correctly, some other commenters have claimed
that these are not "real" files. However, they do take up a lot of
disk space, and they can be copied to other folders for permanent
reference.

The easiest way that I've found to access your own internet data files,
again from the Folders view of My Computer, is as follows:
--rightclick Drive C:
--select Properties
--select Disk Cleanup
--highlight Temporary Internet Files
--select View Files.

This opens a new window displaying your own Content.IE5 and its
subfolders. Again, you can open a folders tree if you like, and
explore the contents of each subfolder. Individual data files can be
copied, deleted, etc.


For what it may be worth, when I was previously running Windows 2000 on
a single-user machine, Content.IE5 was not hidden from view; I could
see both the cookies in the main TIF folder, and Content.IE5 and its
subfolders and data files without having to make any sort of fancy
end-run like this.


Sorry, no email queries or replies.

 

[Drew Tognola]

For a moment I had a flashback to my English SAT test, or was that the math
part of the test? Only kidding of course.
Drew

 

[Guest]

So where DO they bury the survivors?

 

[Rock]

On a two-user (Alice and Bob) machine running XP, first open My
Computer, and open the Folders tree on the left side of the screen.

<snip>

Is there a question in all this?

 

[kaream]

Is there a question in all this?

No. And I apologize for not being more clear. In reading through
quite a few threads posted concerning the Content.IE5 folder I've found
some good and useful information, and some that I thought was
incomplete, misleading, difficult to understand, involving
unnecessarily complex procedures, and/or just plain wrong. My own post
here might well be criticized for any or perhaps all of these same
problems.

I may not have looked far enough afield, but I haven't yet seen anyone
else point out that while Alice can see her own cookies but not her own
internet data files, she can see Bob's internet data files but not his
cookies -- and vice versa. Whatever Microsoft's reasoning in setting
XP up this way, it strikes me as being a serious bug.

Contrary to what some respondents seem to have asserted, internet data
files in the Content.IE5 subfolders CAN be deleted, copied, moved, run,
etc, and selectively rather than all or none. And they do consume a
considerable amount of disk space.

I can understand that some users prefer to access a hidden folder via
the Start | Run | [etc] procedure, where you must type in the action
required, but for me (and I suspect for many others) it is simpler and
more intuitive to approach this visually with Windows Explorer, where
you can simply point and click on the desired action.

 

[kaream]

Note that even without going through the procedure to view the contents
of your Content.IE5 folder, you can easily find the amount of disk
space it takes up, together with the related cookies, simply by
rightclicking on Temporary Internet Files and selecting Properties.

 

[kaream]

All joking about "Alice" and "Bob" aside, I should have specified at
the start that in my system, both Alice and Bob share the same physical
machine, and both have administrative privileges.

What I do not know is whether in a situation where a single
administrator controls many other users on separate computers, the TIF
folder, with Content.IE5 and its subfolders, behave exactly the same
way as I've described. But in reading other posts submitted by people
apparently in this position, I'm guessing that one's own Content.IE5 is
always hidden. Do non-administrators always have access to everyone
else's Content.IE5, other than their own, as I assumed?

I also assume that, as on my own system, Alice can not only see but
also has the capability of manipulating the files in Bob's Content.IE5
subfolders -- and, again, vice versa.

 

[Winux P]

: kaream wrote:
:
: > On a two-user (Alice and Bob) machine running XP, first open My
: > Computer, and open the Folders tree on the left side of the screen.
:
: <snip>
:
: Is there a question in all this?
:
: --
: Rock
: MS MVP Windows - Shell/User
:

Affirmative Spock, you've just asked it.

- Winux P