Replies

Here's another case where Microsoft bigots and a variety of stupid, paranoid or idiotic people without a single sense of technology get all in a huff about something totally benign they have no understanding of. Simply put, browsers cache pages and portions thereof to improve performance by being able to retrieve a local copy of a file and other content rather than having to download repeatedly. In order for the browser to ascertain whether the file or other resource has been previously downloaded and to locate where such was previously stored a persistent "index" file is used. If you don't want to take advantage of the caching feature then disable it through the browser. If you want to clean up temporary internet files that are no longer being utilized then it's preferable have the browser do it for you to ensure that both the index and associated cache files are deleted in tandem. Next thing you know these same "geniuses" who are trying to undermine the browsers caching capabilities will be complaining about its download times or other problems they've created.

There's an easy way to get rid of these files -- and you don't have to buy a utility to do it. Under XP, close all instances of IE. Boot a command prompt. Bring up the Task Manager (right-click on the task bar and select "Task Manager..."). Select the EXPLORER.EXE process and click "End Task". In the command prompt, "cd C:\Documents and Settings\UserName" folder (substitute your login name for UserName), and "attrib -r -h -s index.dat /s" and then "del index.dat /s". Done. Game over.

Simply put, browsers cache pages and portions thereof to improve performance by being able to retrieve a local copy of a file and other content rather than having to download repeatedly.

I'm not sure that is an adequate explanation.

Most browser caching systems store the history information temporarily, perhaps for a few hours, but this Microsoft index.dat sounds like a permanent record of every web site ever visited with Internet Explorer.

Why is it necessary to store a list of every web site an IE user visits in a permanent record?

Does it really improve performance on web sites that were visited a year ago?

If not, why do competing browsers take the trouble to manage the cache while Microsoft doesn't?

"Here's another case where Microsoft bigots and a variety of stupid, paranoid or idiotic people without a single sense of technology get all in a huff about something totally benign they have no understanding of. Simply put, browsers cache pages and portions thereof to improve performance by being able to retrieve a local copy of a file and other content rather than having to download repeatedly. In order for the browser to ascertain whether the file or other resource has been previously downloaded and to locate where such was previously stored a persistent "index" file is used."

Well. . . no.

I just deleted the index.dat files on my machine. They were over 8 meg in size. Because of the size of the biggest one (7.7M) every time I used IE my system slowed to a crawl. It then continued to crawl until I rebooted.

Deleting index.dat did not erase the cache files. They are still there. It did not degrade the performance of IE, rather it improved it.

I have had my computer since 1999, and have been upgrading it. While not blazing fast it was more than adequate for my purposes. Recently (over the last 6 mo to a year) it has been performing very slowly.

My comp sci major oldest son was convinced that I had a virus. I found that hard to believe for a number of reasons.

OTOH, my computer was behaving very similarly to the way the last computer I had behaved when I had the "logging" feature of Outlook turned on. Whenever I used certain MS products the computer took forever opening files. (Logging on was default for Office '97.) The log file got bigger and bigger and bigger until it was almost impossible to use Office.

Similarly, I had been finding a perfectly good, albeit old, computer almost impossible to use IE on -- until I deleted index.dat. The very size of the file meant that opening it, writing to it, then closing it took a *lot* of time.

This is not paranoia or anti-MS bigotry. Getting rid of that vampire has really improved the performance of my computer. I now plan to purge it every 3 months or so. Not because I am afraid of Big Brother -- because I better use for my time.