"Ray concerning your conversation on 2/12/2006 about the content.ie5
folder. If you just want to see what is in it, along with the other
subfolders, and don't what to edit or delete the content you can do so
by creating an empty folder on your "C" drive. Then copy and paste your
Temporary Internet Folder into the new folder. You can then see and
navigate thorough all the folders. After viewing you can then decide it
you need to go though the hassle of deleting them, which is a whole
different issue. Just thought I would let you know."
New questions concerning the TIF Content.IE5 folders are posted every
day in the various forums here in Google Groups, and one has to assume
that at least some curious users will have taken the time to search
through prior discussions before, and instead of, posting their own
redundant question. Most such questions seem to concern wanting to
delete the files, apparently for three reasons: privacy concerns, hard
drive space limitation, and software conflicts.
But as addressed here by Microsoft News, quite a few frustrated users
simply want to see what's there in these "super-hidden" folders. This
suggestion of copying the entire TIF folder to a new non-hidden folder
is quite useful in that regard, but as noted, this does allow you only
to see the files. Actually, it allows much more than that, because
these are real files, not merely pointers, that had been automatically
downloaded from every website visited, and the individual files can
then be viewed, copied, moved, run, etc, once they are accessible. One
thing you cannot do with these copied files, obviously, is to delete
them individually from their original location in the TIF folders. But
there's a way to do that as well; it's not that difficult to access the
original Temporary Internet Files Content.IE5 folder and its subfolders
once you know how.
There are various ways to do this, but I prefer to use Windows Explorer
(My Computer) as follows: right-click Drive C:, select Properties,
select Disk Cleanup, highlight Temporary Internet Files, and select
View Files. This opens a new window displaying the original
Content.IE5 folder and all of its 8-character randomly-named
subfolders. Again, the files found here can be viewed, copied, moved,
run, etc, and they may also be individually deleted. If you return to
your first window and open folders down from Drive C: through Documents
and Settings \ [my logon name] \ Local Settings \ Temporary Internet
Files, what you find there are cookies and other pointers, many of
which have names similar but not identical to the names of the real
files located in the Content.IE5 subfolders. The two open windows do
not duplicate any of each other's display -- the first shows only
cookies and pointers, the second shows only the actual files.
As several users have pointed out, earlier versions of Windows did not
go to extraordinary lengths to hide TIFs. A couple of days ago at
In the subdir for temp internet files and cookies, there is
only one index file (DAT) in each subdir that can't be opened.
This is unlike older versions of Windows, where all the files
are displayed. How can I view the cookies and temp internet
files?
That is a feature of XP. By design.
Microsoft may have had its inscrutable reasons for designing XP to
"super-hide" the Content.IE5 folder and its files from users, but it
doesn't make any sense that on a multi-user machine, anyone has
complete unobstructed access to everyone *else's* Content.IE5 and its
files, *but not their own*.
"By design", I don't doubt. Calling it a "feature" is stretching the
meaning of the word beyond reason. It's gimmicky and silly, and it
drives users nuts.
