Visited Links Won't Change Color!

[jessyel]

My visited links are no longer changing color (to the
default purple). My history is set to 75 days long. The
links colors under Internet Options' General Tab are
still different. What the heck is going on?

I investigated the index.dat file in C:\Documents and
Settings\Owner\Local Settings\History and found something
interesting. When I delete this index.dat file, the links
start changing color again. When I bring it back in (I
have a backup of it), the links don't change color again.
I want to keep this file since it has all the visited
links of scholarships I've applied to. I don't want to
start fresh and apply for the same scholarships (there's
fee's involved). And there's around 200 I've applied to,
so I need these links. However, for the same reason, I
need the new ones to change color.

How do I fix this problem so that the visited link colors
start changing again? Thanks in advance...

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

There are only two possibilities of which I'm aware with regard to this
issue.

First, open IE, go to Tools, Internet Options, on the General tab, click
Colors, be sure the "visited" and "unvisited" colors are not set to the same
color. NOTE: you would not necessarily have had to change this option
yourself. Some pop-up or malware that might have made the change without
you realizing it.

If the colors are different, the only other thing of which I'm aware that
might cause this is if the History folder is corrupt. The fix would be to
delete the History folder and index.dat file and let the system recreate
them.

Of course this will defeat the purpose of what you are trying to do at least
with regard to your scholarship applications. In order to at the very
least, protect those sites, you might create a sub-folder of Favorites and
call it Applied Scholarships and add the sites to which you've already made
applications and add future sites as you make new applications.