Last Thursday my work browser (IE5) stopped highlighting links I’ve visited. Links I visited prior to that date remain highlighted, but new links aren’t. Since I actually do use the internet for research, not just posting to message boards, this is a major inconvenience. I do have Tools->Internet Options->Colors set to highlight them, and I’ve tried changing the colours around to see if that works, but it doesn’t.
This is only happening on my computer, not my colleagues’.
Any ideas 
Oh, I’m using Windows NT, we’re a bit behind the times here.
Oh come on, somebody must have some idea …
I was going to suggest the color thing, but since you tried that already, it must be something else. Maybe your pages are not refreshing but reloading from a cache? Make sure the browser is set to reload each page from the source.
Well, I cleared the cache and they’re still not highlighting. I haven’t changed any settings since last week, so I dunno why it would have started doing this all of a sudden anyway.
Thanks for the suggestion, though.
You browser cache and history clear themselves out at least partially every once in a while, sometimes completely. Since that is the only place that keeps track of where you’ve visited, if it completely clears itself, it will not know where you have visited recently. When it happens is individual to each computer.
It’s also possible that a recent Windows Update reset some things. I’m sure MS made some changes to IE follwing the most recent virus attack.
You can go into your internet options and change how often these caches clear themselves out.
If knowing where you wnet is that important to your work, you should make use of the “Favorites” feature to keep track of where you’ve been.
Relying on colors is a bad plan, because as more and more sites style themselves with CSS or XSLT, they may override your default browser colors.
Thanks, but it’s still highlighting links I visited prior to last Thursday - it’s just that sites I visit since then aren’t being highlighted. Even when it’s just different pages on the same site. So it’s still a mystery.
“Favorites” really isn’t an option for the way I use the web, but thanks.
I think I will just try Opera for a while.
I noticed the same problem on a machine last year but it was just before I installed IE 5.5 so I never really searched for a solution.
At least after installing IE 5.5 I didn’t have the problem any longer!
The Cooxie Toolbar 1.0
is a program that let’s you edit your index.dat file and hence your visited sites.
You could always install it and see if your machine is actually recording what sites you visit. It won’t fix the problem but at least will get you on the right track.
Available from http://www.diodia.com/