Hopping Temporary Internet Files folder

[Omar's Howl]

A day or so ago, something strange (at least to me) happened; the Temporary
Internet Files folder in my XP Home installation moved from the default
Local Settings \ Temporary Internet Files to Local Setting \ Temp \
Temporary Internet Files. I'm not sure what caused this; no updates were do
recently and no one went into the Internet Properties dialog box and changed
the setting as to where the TIF folder should be pointed to (at the time, it
still said the TIF folder should be in its default location).

The default TIF folder still existed, but all the usual internet "junk" from
IE was being written into the new location. Moreover, a new History and
Cookies folder was created in the Temp directory; all that data was also
being written to those folders instead of the defaults as well. I could
clear the IE cache using the built-in tools, but most of my 3rd-party apps
were useless (except ZA Pro), as they continued to look to and clean the
internet trash in the default (and always empty) folders.

I fixed the issue by making the TIF look at yet another location on the HD,
then resetting back to the default--I might have been able to set back to
the default right away had I tried, but I wanted to see if I could get IE to
work with any location *I* chose, which it did when I selected a new spot on
another HD. Once set back to the default, I could only then go to the
recreated History, Cookies and TIF folders in the Temp directory and delete
them and their recreated index.dat files.

My question is: since I'm fairly certain no one on my end made this change,
can a malicious website do what I encountered, change the storage locations
of TIF, History and Cookies folder?

 

[PA Bear]

Were you having any problems that prompted you to examine all this or were
you just curious?

To which location does "IE Tools>Internet Options>General>Temporary Internet
Files>Settings>TIF folder" point?
--
HTH...Please post back to this thread

~Robear Dyer (aka PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE)
AH-VSOP

Protect Your PC
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tips/pcprotec.asp

 

[Omar's Howl]

I inadvertantly clicked on the default TIF directory for our username and to
my surprise found it was empty when it should not have been. Then I clicked
on the default History folder for the same username and found that it was
empty as well. Only then did I begin searching the HD for where IE was
saving the cache information. When I found the new TIF folder in Local
Settings \ Temp, I found the recreated History and Cookies folder as well.

Also, I guess I noticed (admittedly after-the-fact, after I had already
discovered the always empty default directory) the usual internet cleaner
app I use was finishing far too fast, given the amount of cache information
it should have been cleaning out but wasn't.

As to functionality, it appeared that everything with IE itself was still
working as it should, other than the cache location reported in Internet
Properties was not telling the true (new) location of the cache. The only
things that weren't working were the 3rd-party internet cleaners (freeware
and pay) that didn't offer to clean the Temp folder as one of their options,
so as a result were now looking in the wrong place (and therefore would've
been useless and a waste of money and effort).

 

[PA Bear]

OIC.

Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
Doctor: "Don't do that."

~PA Bear

 

[Milhouse Van Houten]

I'd love to see this bug corrected. I have to assume it's one, since I've
seen it happen on no less than three different machines, out of the blue for
no apparent reason.