Pflueger said:
I have had my tools/internet options/advanced settings to enable "empty temp
internet files when browser is closed" ON since as long as I can remember,
and it remains on now. I just checked and I have temp internet files still
in there from as far back as January 2006-- so obviously this setting is not
performing as it should.
Two questions:
Is something broke? Please advise -- what would be the best way to treat
this?
Others have complained about this. I have suggested the diagnostic
procedures that I would try to test it, e.g. using tools such as RegMon,
FileMon, and Process Explorer but I have no interest in trying it myself.
My guess would be that it may only work when all users of the TIF terminate
and then perhaps only when IE is the last to terminate. Etc.
Hmm... Process Explorer (doing a Ctrl-F find for Temporary Internet Files)
shows that a surprising number of other processes have "handles" open
there, including explorer.exe. Testing the ultimate case could prove
that there would be a theoretically possible but impractical procedure
necessary to use the feature. E.g. in order to terminate explorer.exe
you would have to bring up Task Manager and use its End Process
button on its Processes tab. Etc.
Also --The reason I checked was because I found some instructions on how to
save "Flash" (*.swf) files from the web to a folder on my HD. The temp
internet folder size is set at 512MB -- is this a reasonable size?
Depends on what you want to do. If you want to clear it every time
you close IE anyway why bother having anything as large as that?
If you only open and close IE several times a day or only visit each site
once a day you may not be getting any benefit from caching at all.
Then having a large cache would just mean you have more overhead
(e.g. both RAM and CPU) to search through stuff which won't be reused.
OTOH there may be a different kind of overhead (and perhaps more
chance of problems) in its replacement algorithm, in which case having
a large, essentially limitless cache would just mean that that procedure
would never be invoked. BTW the latter is the basis of operation with
the CacheSentry utility: have IE see a large essentially unlimited
cache but clean it up periodically to a much smaller size, such as 50 MB.
I think the main overhead of the cache is in the number of files cached,
not the sizes of the files it holds, so if you're going to be clearing it frequently
that number should always be relatively small.
HTH
Robert Aldwinckle
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