IE6 only getting history "by most visited"

[sjeter]

Hi - If I click 'By Date', 'By Site', or 'By Order Visited Today', it's blank.

It used to be working - I run WinXp/Home and have been keeping up with all of the updates - couldn't find anything on Micosoft Support.

I use Panda Antivirus and not McAfee.

 

[PAndersen]

In the registry, at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet ExplorerControl Panel]
there may be a DWORD named history. When set to 1, it will disable changes to history settings. If found, change the value to 0. A similar parameter may be found in H_C_U\ ..

 

[sjeter]

Thanks, PAnderson, but I'm running XP/Home and I don't have those entries. Any ideas?

 

[sjeter]

Under Cocuments and Settings\MyName\Cookies, I have index.dat and a bunch of txt files. I also have a Favorites folder.

Then under C:\Windows\Temp, I have another Cookies folder with an index.dat that has a date of April, 2002. Then I have a History folder, then a subfolder under that of History.IE5, which has an index.dat with the date of April, 2002.

Does this look right or should I have the History folder under Documents and Settings?

Also, under the Temp folder I have Temporary Internet Files with a subfolder of Content.IE5 and a bunch of empty folders with weird names like WHYZKLQV.

 

[manarth]

The key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel

is found in the windows REGISTRY, not as a file on the hard disk.

You can access the registry by running regedit.

WARNING: making changes to your registry can stop your PC from working. change stuff at your peril.
backing up never hurts


<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[PAndersen]

sjeter is probably correct : that key is not found in registry in (all) XP machines.
An idea to increase the history cache size ?

 

[manarth]

sorry - my mistake... went straight from reading about the registry to reading the line about c:\whatever\cookies.

and here's me telling people to &quot;read the question&quot;

cache size shouldn't be an issue - it's still caching the site names, just not displaying them - but everything's worth a try!
(tools --> internet options --> settings --> amount of disk space to use)

deleting &quot;index.dat&quot; from your history folder may help (don't worry, IE will &quot;grow&quot; another one!)

Might also pay to delete the entire &quot;temporary internet files&quot; folder's contents.

Do this for the relevant folders under &quot;c:\windows&quot; and for &quot;c:\documents and settings\yourname\&quot;

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[sjeter]

OK, I had another admin user setup and from there I saved the cookies and then deleted them plus the history and temp. internet files folders. I did the same for the windows temp history folder.

Then I logged back on as myself and launched IE: no joy. Still only 'View By Most Visited'.

Even though I did 'View, Tools' to see hidden & system files, I could only see the History.IE5 and the index.dat from the other user. But that confirmed that IE recreated them.

Now they're only in Local Settings and not Windows/Temp.

Now what?

 

[manarth]

it's an absolute stab in the dark - but you could do worse than scanning for adware / spyware / and BHOs

faq608-3482 can help with this.

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[sjeter]

Thanks, marc. I ran Spybot & Ad-aware and BHOdemon. I didn't run across anything major.

I'm going to try repairing IE with the System File Checker as soon as I find my SP1 CD...

 

[PAndersen]

Also try an url registering , example in thread779-543683.

 

[sjeter]

Thanks, PAndersen - I saw that in another post and tried all the reregistrations - still no joy.

I saw on another site that if SFC/ scannow didn't fix the problem, instead of doing a WinXP repair, to edit the registry so IE6 could be reinstalled and then downloading IE6/SP1.

I will let y'all know what happens (I'm a transplanted Texan but I stuck that in there anyway).

 

[sjeter]

I did some extensive googleing of &quot;microsoft.public&quot; newsgroups for &quot;history&quot; and found a link to

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

and ran the registry tweak for #101, which, PAnderson, merged an entry for the 'Policies' key with the dword set to 1 - didn't help - so I changed it to zero - still no help.

I tried the SDF /scannow. No joy.

I did the registry tweak: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Active Setup \ Installed Components \ {89820200-ECBD-11cf-8B85-00AA005B4383} - right-clicked the IsInstalled value and clicked Modify, then changed the value data from 1 to 0.

I went to the IE6 site & downloaded the IEsetup.exe, which started the process to download a bigger file - the installation failed because it didn't have the Windows Logo signature. I checked Control Panel \ System \ Hardware \ Driver Signing and it is set to Warn - but the
error message says contact your Administrator! Should it be set to Ignore?

Then I tried doing a Windows Repair from my recovery CD and got a BSOD stop error C0000221 Unknown Hard Error \SystemRoot\System32\ntdll.dll

<vent>Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh!!!!!</vent>

I'll be out of town until Friday, June 6th, so I'll check back then.