Deleting Cookies in IE6, XP Pro

[Guest]

Hi,
have had a problem signing out of .Net Passport sites. The MSN guys said to
delete TIF, clear History and Delete cookies in IE6 | Tools | Internet
Options | General. I did this and my signout worked fine on the sites I used
it. I am puzzled though, that the C:\Documents and Settings\My Name\Cookies
folder still contains several hundred cookies, the following .dat files
(index.dat, mm256.dat, mm2048.dat). I would like to know how I can SAFELY
remove these cookies (IE6 |Tools | Internet Options | General | Delete
Cookies does NOT remove all of them, possibly some?). Ideas appreciated,
Cheers,

Helter_Skelter

 

[Don Varnau]

Hi,
Try CCleaner (freeware) from http://www.ccleaner.com/

Option 2...
Delete the Cookies folder for that user account. Login as Administrator or
another user with admin privileges and delete the affected Cookies folder.

Hope this helps,
Don
[MS MVP- IE]

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

Hi,
have had a problem signing out of .Net Passport sites. The MSN guys said to
delete TIF, clear History and Delete cookies in IE6 | Tools | Internet
Options | General. I did this and my signout worked fine on the sites I used
it. I am puzzled though, that the C:\Documents and Settings\My Name\Cookies
folder still contains several hundred cookies, the following .dat files
(index.dat, mm256.dat, mm2048.dat). I would like to know how I can SAFELY
remove these cookies (IE6 |Tools | Internet Options | General | Delete
Cookies does NOT remove all of them, possibly some?).

If they don't show up in the TIF viewer as Cookie: I suspect that
they are just residual information in the Cookies\index.dat file.
If you still have other files in there which are not related to the
Cookie: entries shown by the TIF viewer I guess that they
would be strays which were not properly deleted when their
associated entries in the index.dat were deleted.


BTW AFAIK the other .dat files were last used in IE4.
How old is this machine you are looking at?


Hmm... maybe it was even pre-IE4?

<title>KB178702 - Description of the Mm256.dat and Mm2048.dat Files</title>

<quote>
Note that in Internet Explorer 4.0, the Index.dat file in the
Temporary Internet Files folder performs this function.
</quote>


I note that my Cookies folder has those files too but they are both empty
and have change dates which are probably when I created this partition.
At least XP seems to have avoided creating the ones that used to be
in History too.


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
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[Guest]

Don & Robert,
Thanks for your posts and your suggestions.
I first Deleted files and Offline content, deleted Cookies and deleted
History.
I took Don's option 2 and booted into safe mode and logged on as
administrator, but rather that deleting the Cookies folder I deleted the
contents and then rebooted. I then had a look in the Cookies folder. A new
index.dat file was there, freshly created. I then logged onto MSN Hotmail,
looked in the Cookies folder and new MSN cookies were present. Hmm..
I am coming to the conclusion the IE6 is actively using the contents of the
folder. Is this normal behaviour?
I still have problems using the Passport sites common login, and also
incorrect (caching behaviour) Hotmail functionality.
Would appreciate some more advice,
Cheers,

Helter_Skelter

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

Don & Robert,
Thanks for your posts and your suggestions.
I first Deleted files and Offline content, deleted Cookies and deleted
History.
I took Don's option 2 and booted into safe mode and logged on as
administrator, but rather that deleting the Cookies folder I deleted the
contents and then rebooted. I then had a look in the Cookies folder. A new
index.dat file was there, freshly created. I then logged onto MSN Hotmail,
looked in the Cookies folder and new MSN cookies were present. Hmm..
I am coming to the conclusion the IE6 is actively using the contents of the
folder. Is this normal behaviour?

Sure. What is your problem with it?

If you want more insight into how Cookies are being used
try repeating your test but this time before using IE change the Privacy
settings to prompt each use of Cookies. If you want you could even
try disallowing saving them using the prompt.

Another thing you could do is run FileMon (freeware from SysInternals)
filtering on Cookies while you are testing. Then you could confirm (e.g.)
if denying a prompt inhibited a write of the individual Cookies files.
(I wouldn't necessarily expect all writes to the Cookies subdirectory
to be inhibited as I haven't actually performed this test yet myself.)

I still have problems using the Passport sites common login, and also
incorrect (caching behaviour) Hotmail functionality.
Would appreciate some more advice,

If you need more help, remember: your words have to substitute for
what our eyes might notice. Please describe your symptoms in more
detail.


HTH

Robert
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