Behaviour of index.dat 1

[kwinsw]

Hi,

I’m trying to work out how index.dat files behave - in particular how they behave when you delete them.

I’ve been deleting the index.dat files from one user account by creating a file called indexdat.cmd that contains the following text

Del "C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Cookies\index.dat"
Del "C:\Documents and Settings\ Username\UserData\index.dat"
Del "C:\WINDOWS\Temp\Cookies\index.dat"
Del "C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\OfflineCache\index.dat"
Del "C:\WINDOWS\Temp\History\History.IE5\index.dat"
Del "C:\WINDOWS\Temp\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat"
Del "C:\WINDOWS\System32\config\systemprofile\Cookies\index.dat"

I then boot into “safe mode with command prompt” and run the file. It works fine but there are a few things I have questions about. I was hoping someone could help.

If I try to delete the file “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Cookies\index.dat” without first deleting all the cookies in the same folder deletion appears to fail.

After several attempts what I think is happening is that Windows is creating a new index.dat file in that location and populating it with all the information from cookies that are still in the folder? Is this assumption correct?

Secondly, all the index.dat files are deleted without any problem. But I was rather surprised to find that, even after some fairly extensive web browsing, they hadn’t been automatically recreated. I expected Windows to this as soon as I booted out of safe mode.

Can anyone tell me why they haven’t been recreated, when they will be recreated and in response to what stimulus or event?

Fairly arcane stuff I know, but I’d be very grateful if someone could help me with this.

All the best

kwinsw

 

[linney]

Only guessing, but whether files such as Index.dat get created or not probably depend on some extent as to which user is logged on and which user is not. Another reason, again just guessing, is that it waits for you to close your browser to create the necessary entries in any Index.dat. Maybe the Index.dat concerned is held in memory and not written anywhere until later?


This article is Windows 9x related but the story of Desktop.ini and Index.dat files is pretty much applicable to XP.

http://sillydog.org/mshidden.html

Safely Delete the Temporary Internet Files.

Completely Deleting the Temporary Internet Files and index.dat.

To delete the History folder and index.dat (XP).

The above topics are all mentioned at this site.

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm