Norton Speed Disk, unmoveable files and the 'index.dat' file.

I just ran a quick defrag on my system with Norton SpeedDisk 2001 and there is a file that is unmovable.

It is the index.dat file and it seems to be scatered all over the driver. (Even thought it is only about 64k.)

(There are two of these files, but it is the one in teh C:\Windows\cookies directory that seems to be the one.)

Does anyone know what this file is for and why it is ‘unmoveable’???

Who knows what program it is for? why dont you open it with a word processor & look at it?

hmm, I swear an explanation of c:\windows\cookies\index.dat was on the boards in the last couple of months, but I can’t find it.

It’s related to cookies somehow. If you’re concerned about your privacy, you can put a command in your autoexec.bat file to delete it every time you reboot:
del c:\windows\cookies\index.dat (or something similar)
I think Windows will just recreate it. Alternatively, you can make a read-only directory called index.dat in the cookies folder, but I hear that creates problems when you try to download things from the web. Wouldn’t recommend it.

The file is unmoveable because it’s being used by Windows. The same is true with any number of .dll files in the windows directory. If you are after the perfect defrag, I suppose you could reboot into DOS mode, delete the file and then defrag from DOS.

I don’t think it’s worth the effort though.

Delete it? Surely you jest. But you could give it another name & see what happens.

I have at least four files by that name.