Well thanks, but I’m not sure I want computer help from someone whose idea of cleaning the cache is Tools > Internet Options > General > Delete Files, anyway.
Okay, I apologise for being snarky in my last post. But just because I made a slip-up about whether Local Settings is hidden does not mean I don’t know my way around my computer. Content.IE5 does, in fact, exist. You may have IE6, but your crap is still stored in Content.IE5. There is no Content.IE6 as far as I know. And unless you have not used IE since you bought your computer it will be full of crap. Take a look. It taakes 10 seconds.
Okay, I apologise too.
Look dude:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/using/howto/customizing/clearcache.mspx
Your PC might have a content.IE5 folder. Mine does not. You must have upgraded from IE5, while my PC had it all along.
Eleusis, if you read my post on the subject earlier in the thread, those 19,595 files aren’t the cache files. They’re merely shortcuts to the files, which are actually hidden in randomly named folders (e.g. U3B6A59S), which are hidden in the Content.IE5 folder, which you cannot see using regular Windows browsing. What you just did didn’t clear the actual cache files.
However, FlyingRamenMonster I did the IE “delete hidden files” and while the randomly-named folders remain, their content does indeed now seem to be gone.
And I told you man, I did. It’s not there, ON MINE. All the jpegs, WMVs, etc, are right in the temp files folder. There are no subfolders.
Good luck.
Wrong.
These were the actual files, they weren’t shortcuts. The file sizes were ranged from several K to several MB.
With all due respect, Eleusis, this isn’t so. They’re not your regular shortcut, I’ll grant you.
If you look at the file you mention, it has a regular filesize. You can even drop it onto the desktop and look at it: it behaves as you would think. But it isn’t the actual file. It is actually a super-mega-Microsoft shortcut that contains stuff like the path to the URL where it came from, the actual file’s filesize, and also the path to the actual file, which is contained in the place I told you it is.
You can demonstrate this by following the instructions given, identifying a file in one of the Content.IE5 folders, deleting it, then finding the requisite shortcut in the ‘Temporary Internet Files’ folder and trying to do anything with it. It will give you, as it just did with me, the error message “Cannot copy file: cannot read from the source file or disk”.
I’ll post some screenshots if you need further assistance in proving that what you think is happening isn’t actually.
How do you mean? I used to do the “delete files” thing from within IE every week until I found webpages in my cache from a year ago. Is there some other setting that does things properly? I got to work deleting the folders manually but it was taking a little longer than I’d have liked. Anyway ccleaner seems to have taken care of things. The folders did come back, and they are full of html files but they don’t appear to be actual web pages. I guess that works.
Eleusis, I assume you’re using Windows XP. When you click on your Start button what name shows up on the side/top bar?
This took me like 20 minutes to write. Goddamit I hate Dvorak.
To address the Avast question (which may have been answered but I kinda skimmed past the IE back-and-forth) it does claim to be freeware, but mine expired something like 3 months after I downloaded it, and will no longer download new definitions until I purchase the registered version. Some new meaning of freeware that I wasn’t previously aware of, really.
It says “Gentoo Linux 2.6.15.2”. Is that Windows XP? 
OK. I admit I’m stubborn. I admit I’m an asshole. I admit I’m wrong.
Apologies around.
I thought so. sigh Back to AVG we go…
Yeah, me too. Let me take the opportunity to recommend ccleaner, though. Aggressive purging of stuff you didn’t even know you had! Like a colonic irrigation for your hard drive!
Yeah, I downloaded CCleaner last night thanks to this thread, and it dumped an extra 110 Mb from my drive. On a small disk like mine, that’s very handy. Now a boot-time defrag with PerfectDisk and it should all be running a little faster. (Ironically a significant minority of my disk space is taken up with stuff to speed up the computer’s performance.)
Eleusis, I must also offer my apologies: deleting those “shortcut” files does indeed seem to delete the hidden files too.
What you talkin’ 'bout?
[
](http://www.avast.com/eng/free_virus_protectio.html)
Free Registration page.
CMC freeware junkie!
Strange; I’ll admit it was quite a while ago that it expired on me, but I know that I completed their registration process at the same time that I downloaded it, and never got a free key (although it is possible it ended up in my spam folder, I suppose) and could swear it had some fee attached to the registration page when it redirected me there after it expired.
I stand confusedly corrected.
There might be a time limit on the key.
Thanks for the tip, man 
Me, I just finished heavy-duty maintenance on my computer. Crap cleaned, cache cleared, everything updated, files reorganised, keyboard cleaned and the keys rearranged (and what a headache that is turning out to be), virus and adware scanned for the first time in over a year (results: 0 viruses, 0 adware - guess that firewall is doing its job, or maybe my scanners are just broken), uninstalled and reinstalled Avast ( :smack: ) and defragmented twice. Yeah, I have a bad habit of doing all my “periodic” upkeep at once. Computer does seem a bit faster though 
I’m pretty sure that not everything in Content.IE5 is in Temporary Internet Files, though. About 6 months ago I nuked everything in Temporary Internet Files in frustration and ran a virus scan and noticed it taking forever in a folder called Content.IE5… which I’d never seen or heard of before. So I open it up and behold, it is full of crap. So much crap, in fact, that the monumental task of deleting all the folders at once crashed my computer, and doing them one by one took a fair bit more waiting around than I liked. I decided to take care of it somehow… later… and didn’t actually do so until yesterday. So yeah. I wish I knew what Microsoft was thinking when it came up with this.