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IE History Files

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by lo 2 views

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I was doing backup (Win NT, long story).
It hit several files that were open, waited
for a bit, and skippe. One was INDEX.DAT.
Got curious and did DIR INDEX.DAT /S and found 760,000 or so bytes in 16 files, path is: C:\winnt\profiles\...\history.ie5\MSHist0120010818200.

By and large I don't use IE (prefer Netscape). The directorie (MSHist*) date from 6/21/00 to 8/18/01 (today). There is a 212,000 file in a dir dated today.

I am assuming they are some form of IE history / backup.
1) Is there a way to delete/purge from IE?
2) Can I just delete them and the .DIR without causing problems?
3) Is there a way to prevent IE from creating (most likely not, MS Knows Best)?
4) Is there a way to limit the number (to 1-2)?

thx, lo

5 replies

by zlitocook

yes you can delete the dat files but they kind of hold a profile for the users. so when you do the user has some strange things when they use their computer, icons and directorys look funny. Aol bought netscape but they still use I.E. I am still trying to get netscape to be good while using Aol.

by lo

Thanks. About par on icons, and such for user profile I would guess.

by richard lane

1) Simply right click on the IE icon and hit 'Clear History' This should clear out the history files that currently exist
2) Probably, but given MS's propensity to SNAFU, best try 1) instead
3) You can set the 'Days to keep pages in history' to zero. This will not stop them being created, but they should (stress on should) be deleted automatically at the end of the day
4) Only limit is on no. of days (within IE). You could probably set limits on the dir size etc, but I'm not sure of how to go about that - sorry.

Hope this helps

Richard

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