Post by Peter FoldesProfessor dufus at work :-)
Not sure which one you are calling the dufus. content.ie5 is referred
to as the caching subfolder and it may not get cleared out despite all
TIF options to do so.
I did a bit of checking and did indeed see that files and subfolders
under content.ie5 were NOT all getting deleted upon exit from IE (but
I'm not back on IE6 and am using IE8 although if someone is asking about
IE6 then it's not a defect newly experienced with IE8). IE has ALWAYS
been flaky regarding its ability to delete its TIF. Although the option
is enabled to delete its TIF when IE is exited, it doesn't always
happen. Over time there will be remnant files left behind. That's why
the IE7Pro and PopUpCop add-ons and other privacy utilities finish the
cleanup that IE is known to not always complete.
- Internet Options -> General tab -> Delete browsing history
May not delete all files under content.ie5. Subfolders will remain.
- Internet Options -> Advanced tab --> Empty TIF option:
May not delete all files under content.ie5. Subfolder will remain.
- Ccleaner (with option disabled to leave files not over 48 hours old):
Delete most files and subfolders but not all. Some applications
besides the web browser may use a subfolder under content.ie5. The
inuse files cannot be deleted until you exit the application.
From http://www.wintipz.com/XP/AutoComplete.htm:
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
What is Content.IE5?
This is a folder in the Windows directory where Internet Explorer stores
temporary internet files. These files are stored in order to access
frequently visited WebPages faster. It prevents Internet Explorer to
download the whole webpage every time you go to a certain webpage. For
instance if you go to www.wintipz.com/index.htm for the very first time
your computer would store the images found on this webpage so that they
do not have to be downloaded again when you visit it sometime later. It
might be harder and more time consuming if the Wintipz server was
located in India and the visitor was accessing the webpage from the
United States of America. More information had to be downloaded if there
was no Temporary Internet Files folder present on your computer. So
every time a new request to www.wintipz.com/index.htm is made your
computer would compare the webpage content that is locally stored
(usually) under C:\WINDOWS\Temp\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5
and that present on the Wintipz server. If both the files are same then
you would not be required to download the same content again thus
resulting in much faster web page access. But sometimes you end up
storing too much under the temporary internet files folder which also
degrades your internet access speeds. Since there is so much content
locally, your computer takes longer to search for the same content
present in the webpage than it would take to actually download the same
content. So it is advisable that you do not store too much locally.
Generally a rule of thumb decided by Internet Explorer by default is
approx. 10% of your hard disk space. But these days the size of the hard
drive is so big that 10% is a lot. I think 200MB is enough. You can set
this figure through Internet Explorer Options.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I have mine set to 100MB. However, most folks would expect the TIF
folder (and not the content.ie5 subfolder) to contain the temp files and
that cleanup would complete as configured. That cleanup should include
the content.ie5 subfolder but IE's cleanup is not reliable. From the
same article:
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Under Temporary Internet Files Section click on Delete Files. You will
get the below dialog box. Check the box next to Delete all offline
content and then click on OK. This will delete all offline content from
your computer and empty C:\WINDOWS\Temp\Temporary Internet
Files\Content.IE5 folder.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I can no longer test if "Delete all offline content" gets rid of the
files under content.ie5. That option is no longer present in IE8.
Under IE6/7, when you opted to clear the TIF, this prompt came up.
Doesn't in IE8. From IE8's help, "Change the settings for offline
pages: The offline favorites feature has been removed from Internet
Explorer. For more information, see <What happened to offline
favorites>?" So I cannot test if deleting the offline content (which
are duplicated files from the TIF folder) cleans out the content.ie5
subfolder. Larry should be able to test if this offline option works
for IE6.
The content.ie5 is sometimes referred to as the cached icon or cached
file path and can also be used by applications. For example,
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Services\MediaGuide has
data items name Cached*Path that point to content.ie5. In fact, when I
tried using CCleaner, the subfolder and its files under content.ie5 that
it would not delete where for this path (although WMP was not running).
I have MagicJack (for VOIP) running which has an adware pane and it
keeps its web files under content.ie5. In fact, Microsoft refers this
to the content.ie5 as a cache path in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings\Cache\Paths.
Note that setting Windows Explorer to show all hidden files and also to
show all system files will NOT show the content.ie5 subfolder. This is
a "special" system folder that remains hidden in Windows Explorer. You
can navigate to it by adding its folder name to the path shown in the
Address bar in Windows Explorer but you cannot simply click your way
down the folder tree to get there. I've hit other similar "special"
folders that remain hidden in the UI regardless of trying to unhide them
using the config settings in Windows Explorer (just can't remember them
at present). Unless you know about the special subfolder, you won't be
able to navigate to it using Windows Explorer despite unhiding hidden
and system files. Yet you can see the content.ie5 subfolder when using
the 'dir /ad' command (i.e., these special folders are only hidden in
the UI for Windows Explorer). You can get there but not through casual
inspection in Windows Explorer. Other file system UI utilities are
usually blind to the special folders. By "special" folders, I'm not
talking about My Documents, My Pictures, or Network Places or other
files that uses an attribute inside a desktop.ini file in that folder to
set the FolderType (see http://www.xs4all.nl/~hwiegman/desktopini.html).
I'm talking about folders that Windows Explorer is coded to hide.
So, to Larry and with IE6, I'd suggest doing the TIF delete and enable
the option to include deletion of offline content when prompted to see
if that wipes the content.ie5 subfolder. Just using the TIF clearing
optionsmay not fully clear out the content.ie5 "cache" subfolder. You
might instead want to use the Disk Cleanup Wizard. Select the TIF
cleanup item and click View Files where you see it does point at the
content.ie5 folder. So include the TIF category (to include
content.ie5). Follow http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253597 to create a
scheduled job that will do the cleanup without you having the remember
to manually run it. The wizard won't delete the subfolders but it will
delete the files inside of them (unless they are inuse). I followed the
KB article and have a command to run that sageset as a scheduled task
each night.