A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

Interesting Finds: August 7, 2006

Jason Haley — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 05:23:41 GMT

re: A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

Nicholas — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 10:04:01 GMT

Thanks. Looks like I'll have to keep CacheSentry around a bit longer, then :)

A look inside WinInet's index.dat file and changes in IE7 and Vista

The Old New Thing — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:00:26 GMT

The mysterious history file.

re: A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

Stu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:36:55 GMT

So if IE will still work (mostly) with a full or corrupted index.dat and the few issues that present themselves should be fixable, why is it needed?

re: A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

Dean Harding — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 09:34:12 GMT

Stu: index.dat is the file which tells IE how to map a URI to the actual file on disk. IE7/Vista works by removing old items from the cache when the index.dat fills up - and thereby also freeing up space in the index.dat.

re: A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

Ffoeg — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:43:44 GMT

How about I don't want a file on my disk to begin with? That's why I don't use IE. I'd like to know how to run FreeBSD but unfortunately I don't really have the time to learn it right now, so I use Firefox.

re: A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

wndpteam — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:52:02 GMT

IIRC Firefox has a way to clear out your cache/cookies/etc on browser close, I don't believe it has a feature to avoid writing a file to begin with. It is unlikely that IE will be able to have such a feature in the future without breaking a large number of important plugins who expect to work with files instead of datastreams.

re: A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

ghoch — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:58:29 GMT

Why change your favorite browser when you can just delete from index.dat file any information you need? Even you can delete information regarding a particular website. Say try History Killer Pro - http://www.historykillerpro.com

re: A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

Hari — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:27:54 GMT

There is a new index.dat file in the PrivacIE folder in IE8. Can any one explain ?

re: A bit about WinInet’s Index.dat – Q&A

Hugo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:14:08 GMT

Hi There,

Is it possible to forcibly start the cache scavenger programatically (C++)? I can find lots of references to the scavenger but nothing that says it's possible to manually start it when desired, only that it runs intermitently.

TIA