Visited links forgotten

[Stefan Ram]

Suddenly, the IE6 browser has forgotten all links that have
been visited - they appear as »not visited«, but they have
been visited recently. The system has a history duration of
many weeks and the history has not been cleared intentionally.
The problem is still there after a reboot.

The visited links are still in the history, but damaged:
For example, the date last visited is shown in the Windows
explorer, but when »Properties« are selected for that entry,
the date is not shown in the properties window.

Is there a way to »repair« the damaged history file?

I know one way: I could manually revisit every of those
thousands of links in the history orders. But is there a
simpler way?

 

[Don Varnau]

Hi,
Sorry, not exactly a repair- the customary fix for this problem is to delete
the (corrupted) History folder and allow Windows to recreate it.

Free History Eraser from
http://smartprotector.com/eraser/free-history-eraser.htm can usually delete
the History folder. A new one will be created when you restart.

Or the History folder can be deleted manually.
The procedure [Windows XP]
Login as another user with administrator privileges, or from the machine's
default administrator account (startup in safe mode.) Make sure that you can
see hidden and system files (Folder Options> View) then delete the affected
History folder from Windows Explorer. It will be at [C:\Documents and
Settings\yourusername\Local Settings\History] Restart the computer.

315222 - A description of the Safe Mode Boot options in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=315222

It's generally recommended that no more than 20-30 days of history be kept.

Hope this helps,
Don
[MS MVP- IE]

 

[Stefan Ram]

Hi, Sorry, not exactly a repair- the customary fix for this
problem is to delete the (corrupted) History folder and allow
Windows to recreate it.

Thanks! In the meantime, I have invented a repair method:

The information has been lost in the »index.dat« file in the
history main directory, which made visited links lose their
special color, but the visited addresses are still recorded in
the other »index.dat« files in the »MSHist...« subdirectories.

I use a small Perl script to extract the addresses visited
from those »index.dat« files in the subdirectories, like:

my $source = `strings ...\\History.IE5\\MSHist012007082920070830\\index.dat`;
while( $source =~ m{(http://.*)}g ) ...

and then make IE revisit all those URIs via OLE automation:

my $IE = Win32::OLE->new( "InternetExplorer.Application" );
$IE->Navigate( $1 );

This made them regain their »visited«-color.

 

[Don Varnau]

Great! Thanks for sharing that solution.

Don
[MS MVP- IE]