aa said:
The files in question are sitting in
Documents and Settings -->Administrator-->Local Settings -->Temporary
Internet Files-->Content.IE5
Inside Content.IE5 there are a number of folders named like 057ZWXU6
All the folder Temporary Internet Files-->Content.IE5-->057ZWXU6 show the
Hidden property unchecked and grayed - doe this mean that they are not
hidden and even cannot be made hidden?
They aren't hidden, but they do have the System attribute. Windows won't
normally search into such folders either. You can't modify the System
attribute through Explorer. It takes something like the command line
ATTRIB program or a file manager that pays less attention to Microsoft's
whims to do that. Oddly enough, File Manager from Windows NT is such a
program.
Folder Local Settings was indeed hidden. I un-checked that, but the result
is the same.
To me it seems that the search results are not connected to hidded-unhidded.
Where am I wrong?
Both the Hidden and System attributes affect the Search results.
Also what is the point to make Temporary Internet Files hidden? I understand
hiding system files -but why hiding Temporary Internet Files?
I noticed that this folder is about 30Mb and some file there are dates two
years ago - they are not that Temporary - could I delete everything inside
Content.IE5? For some reason deleting from IE6 (Internet options-->delete
Temporary Internet Files) does not affect this folder. Perhaps this is
because I replaced IE5 with IE6 and IE6 cannot reach them? But these folders
contain some fresh files.
Microsoft seems to want to conceal some of the workings of Windows to
avoid confusing the technically unskilled. Of course, hiding information
from the user inevitably backfires sooner or later and leads to higher
support costs and increased frustration on the part of the user. There's
no good reason to conceal these files and folders, although it may make
sense no to return them in rsponse to a search because they are after all
intended to be temporary.
As you've found, the files in the TIF folder aren't always so temporary
after all. Other programs, such as Outlook Express may store files there
and IE won't normally touch those. I have IE set to clear the TIF when
it is closed, but that's only a partial solution.
The easiest way to clean out the TIF folder is to close IE, then go to the
Control Panel and select Internet Options. Click the Delete Files button
and check "Clear all offline content", than click OK. That should delete
everything from Content.IE5 except for the files desktop.ini and
index.dat. I do this about once a week.
Index.dat cannot be deleted while the owner is logged on because it's
always in use. Unfortunately if you don't flush it occasionally it will
apparently grow without limit. The easiest way to do that is to log on
as a different user with administrator privileges (you should have an
alternate administrator account anyway) and delete the Content.IE5 folder
and all of its contents. IE will create a new one the next time it
starts.
There is a way to delete index.dat without having another administrator
account, but it involves stopping and restarting Explorer. The process
isn't very satisfactory because not all of your startup items restart when
this is done, but it could be handy in an emergency.
