index.dat and internet cache

[bluemonday_2000]

I am a newbie to eraser so forgive for asking what may be a stupid questions.

I tried delleting the files in my Temporay Internet Folder, and eraser does this very well but it does not delete the index.dat files. Is there a way of deleting these hidden files and other cache files?

 

[eraserbuddy]

Quite unfortunately, you cant erase those files when they are in use. And Windows pretty much always keeps them in use (poor design).

You can erase them if you boot into a command prompt in Win9x. I think you can do that in WinNT/2000/XP as well, but Im not 100% sure.

There is also a trick in Win9x to be able to delete/erase them without rebooting. It involves an undocumented way to close the Explorer shell. If I recall, you hold down a Shift key while selecting the shut down option on the Start Menu. You then cancel the shutdown, keeping Shift depressed. The shell then shuts down, while keeping the windows operating system running. You can then issue commands to erase files using the command-line version of eraser (including index.dat). Finally, you can reload the shell. Its a great trick, and works consistently.

I dont know if a similar trick is available in WinNT/2000/XP. Maybe someone else does?

It would be truly amazing if eraser could be enhanced to erase files like index.dat just like any other file. But I cant think of any way it can be done without introducing possible corruption. After all, if the files are "in use", they are in use by a process that is doing something with them. And unless that process is fully understood, altering the contents of the in-use file could really mess things up. [:0]

 

[dstandl]

How about just renaming Content.IE5 to say Zcontent.IE5
.... Reboot
... System will create a new Content.IE5
... and then erase ZContent.IE5 with the associated index.dat file?

I realize this is not very practical except for periodic purging.

 

[kissme]

quote:Originally posted by bluemonday_2000
I am a newbie to eraser so forgive for asking what may be a stupid questions.

I tried delleting the files in my Temporay Internet Folder, and eraser does this very well but it does not delete the index.dat files. Is there a way of deleting these hidden files and other cache files?
[8)]hey this is a free program called spider that works excellently! get it from this site http://www.fsm.nl/ward/ it will take care of your index.dat

 

[Ultraviolet]

Hi people [],
Ive been using Eraser for a year or so now and a trick I use to delete the Index.dat, and other locked files in Windows XP, is run a command prompt then type Ctrl+Shift+Esc or Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up Task Manager and shut down explorer.exe then run eraserl.exe from the commandline... this seems to unlock the Index.dat files and gets things all tidy []

I do all this by a batch file now though, run it every night and the temp files and such like are gone []

Cya soon!

 

[nodrick]

Hi there bluemonday_2000! Have you thought of using another browser? There are one or two good alternatives to Internet Explorer out there(and lots of turkeys!),so why not try one? The ones I have in mind I use regularly,and are much more secure than I.E. in any form.They are also much easier to "clean" with Eraser,having no "locked" application files.May I suggest Mozilla v1.2.1-which is the development version(and much more advanced form)of Netscape 7.0. It is quite stable,and easy to download and install-just make sure you`ve no trace of Netscape on your puter! See www.mozilla.org for details.Don`t be put off by the jargon. I would just prefer Opera,as it`s very secure,but a little more difficult to get used to.Best Wishes.

 

[eraserbuddy]

quote:Originally posted by Ultraviolet

...I do all this by a batch file now though, run it every night and the temp files and such like are gone []


Would you mind cut and pasting the relevant lines from your batch file that performs this operation? Im very curious to see how you terminate the shell (explorer.exe) from a batch file.

BTW, not too long ago Garrett added the useful "erase on boot" option, which is another way to go. Its great when you want to perform the action a single time. However, using it as a discrete step in a clean-up batch file would probably be a little tricky - I dont think it can be turned on and off without user interaction (i.e. no command-line equivalent of the gui for that option - maybe a possible feature in the future?).