Windows Vista and index.dat files

Part 1 - Examining "Temporary Internet Files"

Looking at index.dat files in Windows Vista, some more dirty little tricks are added.
Why would anyone go out of his way and hide your internet browsing history files? And to top it all classify them as protected system files. Not even Windows system DLLs are so cared to be protected.
To get a feel for what it's all about begin with the following steps. Be aware that these steps apply to Windows Vista only.

- Launch Windows Explorer.
- Go to Tools > Folder Options > View

• Select "Show hidden files and folders"
• Deselect "Hide extensions for known file types" (Why should anyone hide file extensions? If you do so how will you distinguish a file from a folder in Windows Explorer without clicking on it? What is a known file extension?)
• Deselect "Hide protected operating system files"

Now you will be able to see a bit more.

Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet options
Under Browsing history click Settings. Note the current location of your "Temporary Internet Files" which is "C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files"
In Windows explorer browse to that location. What you see there is basically part of your browsing history, images, cookies, .. Wait a minute, don't cookies have their own folder?
Right-click on one of those files, wow they have even their own very special context menu.

Didn't we enable viewing of hidden and protected files? Where is content.ie5 folder? There should be a folder in "Temporary Internet Files" called content.ie5.
In the address bar of Windows Explorer type the location of content.ie5 which is "C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5" and hit Enter.
Low and behold, it now shows the double-hidden content.ie5 in all its glory with subfolders and the infamous index.dat file. What did they think? That we will open "Temporary Internet Files" folder, look hard for content.ie5 folder and say Ah Microsoft has finally removed the index.dat files?

Highlight whatever there is in "Temporary Internet Files" folder, hold the Shift key down and hit the Delete key so they don't end up in the Recycle bin. Of course you can't delete index.dat files, so delete everything else. Don't worry, your computer won't explode. Besides these files and folders have 9 lives, it would be naive to think otherwise. Now restart your computer.
Now launch Windows Explorer and go to "C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files". As expected they are all back and content.ie5 folder is again hidden.

Go to content.ie5 folder as described above and open one of the folders. Choose a file and Copy or remember it's name (I chose menu_image_s[1].png which is 2 KB in size). Now using Windows built-in Search utility search for that file on your hard disk. After a while working hard Windows search will lie and say no items match your search. This begs the question, what other lies is Windows search utility telling us when we are using it?

Lets try to clean Internet browsing history via MS Internet Explorer and see how thorough a job it will do.

Launch MS Internet Explorer and go to Tools > Delete Browsing History
In the "Delete Browsing History" window click the "Delete all ..." button. In the next window tick the "Also delete files and settings stored by add-ons" check box and finally click "Yes". Now all the Internet browsing history files, cache and cookies should be removed, right?

Wrong. Restart your computer, open Windows Explorer and browse to "Temporary Internet Files" folder. As you see some files were silently smuggled in, notably live365.com cookie.

Check the size of index.dat file. It is not changed. Open MS Internet Explorer and use it for half hour. Check the index.dat file again. Its size is increased. Delete browsing history as explained above and check the size of index.dat file. It's the same as before deleting browsing history.

Back to PC Mesh Internet Cleanup