12 folders that follow in the “Content” directory contain unspecified reasons for being there – ie folder #1 is labeled “0123dno7” etc. through the final 11 folders. (is this related to the History folder, which is 5.93 MB?)
Each of these folders contain approximately 44 objects but lists 845 files located in each of these folders for a total of about 5 MB each according to the folder properties. (this includes the main folder in the tree.) If you look at the files you can scoll down and there is NO way there are 845 shown there are cookies files and a few files related to my last two internet sessions after clearing the temp folder via IE.
Now, I have my system set up to show all files, all extensions along with details. So where are the rest of the files for this? I am soooo confused!
A quick check of DOS didn’t net me any useful information as I counldn’t find this directory listed at all, even in ~ format.
Where are the remaining of these files located? How can I have 75 MB worth of temp files when I just cleared temp folder, all that remains are about 3 days of cookies?
I can only add to your confusion, Tech. If I click on IE> Tools>Internet Options>Settings, I can set the amount of TIF folder in use. I set it at 1MB (the minimum; I was told that with a broadband connection the less the merrier). Yet, when I open TIF in the Explorer, it shows 4.42MB. Moreover, immediately after I clean TIF in IE>Tools, the TIF folder in the Explorer is still full.
Are they different folders? In Tools>Options>Settings the path to it appears to be correct. I gave up on solving M$ puzzles in general, long time ago. Mr. Gates appears to be a financial genius, not a SW one. (As the proof: he was expelled from Harvard, or dropped out, academic matters, anyway, and other SW seems to be better than his). With the amount of memory and HD I have, I don’t care anymore about the last TIF I might have, a few KB more won’t kill my PC.
techchick, a quick post and I may expand later if I can get more info.
#1, I believe the “files” that appear in the Temporary Internet Files Folder are not stored on the disk as individual files like the rest. They do not each have a FAT entry and occupy an integer number of clusters, etc. In Other words, IE has a big space reserved for this and has its own scheme, probably designed to save disk space and make things move faster.
#2 I believe IE’s management of this space often “leaks” and may be taking space even though you empty everything. There are utilities designed to clean up this space. I remember I had a bookmark but now I can’t find it. If I find it I’ll let you know.
Wow. I can’t believe that any MS product appears to have bugs, unhandled exceptions, resource or memory leaks; especially not Exploder. Surely this is yet another instance of EBKAC.
Just a few days ago I was reading a web page with a very good explanation about this “leak” and a program that would clean it up and now I cannot find it for the life of me. I hate it when this happens.
From the **microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie5.browser ** newsgroup:
[QUOTE] Original message availible at [/getdoc.xp?AN=631108526&CONTEXT=972774599.2048917534&hitnum=2"]Deja.com](http://x71.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps)
**What you see is an illusion created by Windows Explorer. It is designed to show you what we might call the Cache View when you open any folder that is part of the Temporary Internet Files. If you are on a machine with multiple user profiles, this prevents you from seeing the contents of another user’s cache. Looking at any of them will cause Explorer to display the Cache View only for the current user, i.e., yourself. If you want to verify this for yourself, click Start|Run and type without quotes “winfile”. That will open the old 16-bit File Manager from Win3.x, which does not know how to display the Cache View. Be careful though. Do NOT attempt to change anything at all on your computer with File Manager, as it is not aware of long file names. Just use it to peek into the cache folders and you’ll see that each folder contains different files.
You might also notice that the Cache View displays all the cookies for = the current user. These are not even stored in the Temporary Internet = Files folder. They are kept in c:\windows\cookies, or under =
\windows\users<name>\cookies. They are included in the Cache View only = as a convenience.
Finally, in case you are wondering, the cache folder itself is divided into subfolders in order to make it more efficient. The subfolders are given random names as a security precaution.
**
Premature contribulation is such an embarassing thing.
I was able to find the files using File Manager but the way it works has me pissed.
I can get to the temp directory but it is not giving me the file name for the “content” file.
Man I hate the 8.3 file format! It’s been so long since I have messed around within a strictly DOS environment and even then I was no expert – I knew enough to get me in trouble but I never took any classes dedicated to it.
I don’t know why I am on such a mission for this as it not important to life but it bugs me I can’t see what’s in my computer. hehe
techchick, are you sure the file manager is showing you the Temporary Internet Files folder? Mine doesn’t, it shows the TEMP folder which is an entirely different one. A DOS window does not show it either.
I had this problem a while ago on one of the machines at the office: IE was taking up about 75 MB in my profile directory with temporary internet files. This would not be a problem, except that first, the bloated profile was causing it to take 5 minutes to log on (I timed it), and second, I don’t even use IE. I just deleted all of the directories with the nonsensical names, and despite all of Windows’ warnings that I was destroying the system, it appears that there were no ill effects from it. Of course, I wouldn’t know if it caused problems with IE, so take this with a grain of salt.
I checked in DOS mode. DIR /AH will display hidden files and “C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files” directory is not there.
Note that in C:\windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\User Data\ you have the information for the sites you have visited (what comes up when you click on History) and this does not show up in DOS either.
I am curious to find where this information is kept. I wish I could find the article I read about this. Ir clearly explained that IE has this leak and even if you clear everything the file where the info is kept will not shrink as it should and there is some utility which will do this for you. It seems this problem ahs been common to several versions of IE.
techchick, we may have different versions of IE and mine (V5.00) may keep the files somewhere else. At any rate, as I have explained, the browser’s cache is not kept as separate files in the disk. Windows Explorer simulates the the directory for you.
Note that Outlook Express does the same thing with emails. They show as separate files inside OE but they are not separate files in the disk.
You have excited my curiosity about the browser’s cache and I’ll keep looking for the answer.
kinoons, deleting the swap file when you are in windows does not sound like a good idea to me. I am not going to try it but I suspect the system wouldn’t let you anyway.
Ok, yes, in DOS you can do it safely but I see no advantage. I have fixed the size of my swap file because that speeds up the system a bit. In any case, what do you gain by deleting it in DOS? when you start Windoze again it will just create it again. I can’t see any advantage. Or am I missing something?
The temp file path is sometimes set in autoexec.bat
Look & see if the temp directory path you want is there.
Mine is set to c:\dos But windows has a temp file too
c:\windows emp