Temporary Internet Files

Help & Support
1

DOpus does an exellent job to mimic Windows File Explorer

I never understand why when you click open
C:\document & settings\UserName\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files

that, Windows File explorer shows me the cookies.

I perfectly knows that there is a hidden file "desktop.ini"
and a folder "CONTENT.IE5" that holds all the files under sub-folders.

Maybe, File Explorer doesn't want you to know their secrets.
Believe it or not, sometimes IE just dropped the folders it is using and create some others. SImply do a "delete all temporary files" is not enough. There are tons of files left.

I often use my fav. file manager to remove everything under that folder.

I am very much confused why DOpus does the same just to show a list of cookies ?? Cookies aren't suppose to store in that folder!

2

Go to Prefrences / Folders / Virtual Folders and either turn on Treat all virtual folders as real or turn on Tread the following virtual folders as real and add the Temporary Internet Files folder to the list.

Opus will then show you the real contents of the folder, the CONTENT.IE5 subdirectory, rather than the virtual view of cookies etc.

3

That is not true. Read my post here.

4

That is not true. Read my post here.[/quote]

Thank you for pointing me to your very detailed analysis.
But as a programmer myself for decades, IMHO, your conclusion is incorrect.

The Windows Cookies folder actually lists "pointers"
the cookies files themselves are actually stored inside TIF.
Cookies files are stored as TXT file in the cookies folder.
Use spybot/ActiveScan/Adaware or anything similiar and see what files got deleted.

TIF really is more like a database than a real folder.
There are several hidden "folders" (read that as database folders) inside of TIF.
Untrue. TIF stores each and every downloaded file as is, put usually under 4 hidden sub-folders under TIF/COntent.IE5. I am saying "as is", that is, you can copy the files you want, without doing any special action to retrieve it. Just COPY. JPG/GIF/ASF/MIDI/SWF... anything. Though, sometimes the file extension is missing. But the files are stored as is, not in a database of any kind.

There is an index.dat file (and some other .dat files) that are closely related to cookies files.
The index.dat is, the index. It keeps track of what files are in the temp folder, when/where it is downloaded etc. so IE knows what doesn't need to be download again. that is the how the cache works. Getting file info from the subfolder are too slow and doesn't contain anything more than the time stamp.
You may say that the index.dat is a kind of database, but surely not the rest of TIF.
I am not sure if it stores the index of cookies as well, though.

I saw cases that many machines has a lot more than 4 sub-folders under content.ie5, I guess when IE detects that index.dat is corrupted, it will dump the index.dat at all and rebuilds another one, leaving the orginal sub-folders intact, that makes machines run without tech person maintenance has lots of un-used sub-folders and eats up a lot of spaces.

Cookie files, as listed in the Cookies folder, end in ".txt", but they do not end in ".txt" when displayed in the TIF folder.
The listing in TIF folder are faked. They ARE text files. Drop into command prompt, go to the folder, TYPE it and see the content.
The 3rd line is the URL which saved it.

It is safe just to remove it from the cookies folder. If there is an entry stored in index.dat, IE will rebuild it at next run. It won't get hurt.
Spyware remover will do it this way (I don't think they would do anything to mess with index.dat, which format only IE knows)

Firefox stores all cookies in one file, you may treat it as a database, but surely for the case for IE.

And I even build a utility to remove cookies that are built by known "bad guys" like ad.zanox.com adbrite.com crsky.com, etc, when windows starts up. I have this in my office for 50 machines and never had a problem.
My program will read in the 3rd line and check against a list, deletes it if it matches my black list.
(Run active scan for a few times and you will recognise cookies from which sites that are treated as spyware)

5

Going a bit off-topic here, but in Firefox you can disable cookies by default, except for a whitelist of sites you trust and want cookies for. I like this and wish IE had the same. (Maybe it's finally in IE7?)

(Just wish there was a menu/toolbar item somewhere to quickly add the current site to the whitelist. You have to go into preferences and type the URL by hand which is a pain. There's probably an extension, I guess...)

6

This looks like it will do the trick : CookieSafe

7

Yes, I like this feature too.
I remember with an older version (FF 1.0??) there was an extra button in addition to 'delete this cookie', It is somewhat like "Delete and put it in black list" but somehow dropped in 1.5, I miss this.