How To Delete Index.dat file? [User Recommendation]
This post is part of the user recommendation marathon where users recommend their questions to us.
Our regular reader Vishnu asks us, I have heard about Index.dat files and that they can store lots of information about the sites I browse, is there a way I can get rid of the files so that no one can know which sites I have browsed
Hi Vishnu, thanks for taking the time to ask us this question. We will detail in this post, how you can delete index.dat files to get rid of your Internet activities and history.
Index.dat files are basically data files that can contain information about the sites you visited using Internet Explorer. The file acts as a database of information about your browsing habits and includes URLs you visited, cookies, search queries and files you opened using the browser.
That said privacy has always been a concern with index.dat files, since they cannot be deleted easily using the regular methods. The best and easiest way to delete index.dat file is by using CCleaner, a free software that helps you clear unwanted information from your PC.
Once you have downloaded and installed CCleaner, run the software and choose the option to delete index.dat file by selecting it from the options under Internet Explorer, once you have selected or de-selected the other options click on the button to run the cleaner.
After the cleaner has completed, the index.dat file will not hold any information from your previous browsing solving your privacy concerns.
There are several softwares which charge you for doing the same thing, but like always we find a better solution. So the next time you have a query or a question, you know the best way to figure it out, contact us with your queries and we will try our best to find the best solution for it.
Hope this answered your question Vishnu, feel free to send us your queries anytime.
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Author: Keith Dsouza
I am the editor-in-chief and owner of Techie Buzz. I love coding and have contributed to several open source projects in the past. You can know more about me and my projects by visiting my Personal Website.I am also a social networking enthusiast and can be found active on twitter, you can follow Keith on twitter @keithdsouza. You can click on my name to visit my Google+ profile.Keith Dsouza has written 4449 articles for us.
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What if i want to clear up all the remembered information for a particular text box of email on different blogs or website…how can some one clear the remembered information of a single text box like email.
can u consider this a user recommendation for a post?
^^ In firefox: Tools-> Options -> Privacy -> Show cookies. Now search for the site and then delete the entries shown.
In Vista for IE you can try this:
C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Window s\Temporary Internet Files
Then delete the cookie files.
I used CC cleaner a while back to help remove some spyware files that had been left behind. Very good product, did the trick.
CCleaner is not a free software. Why did you write a lie to help delete Index.dat files…..
@Renaud – CCleaner is a free software, you can download it for free from http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner absolutely free of cost. If someone is selling you CCleaner for a price, it is a scam, do not buy it from them
Microsoft is so desperate to keep you away from Index.dat files that they keeps moving the goalposts via service packs and new versions of windows so what worked yesterday, won’t work today.
Some of the ‘Special Hidden’ folders won’t show even when you use a registry hack and killing processes ‘Explorer’ and ‘IExplorer’ before you try to delete them still won’t unlock the files on Win 7 X 64 (Build 7600) and running batch files without exposing account names and passwords cannot remove these index.dat files at reboot due to the wrong windows permissions.
One method that might still works is to boot-up in safe mode and then assign yourself administrator rights and then see if you can find the files to delete or use a batch file to rename the subfolder below the folder containing the index.bat files and to then only copy the folders back to the original location that don’t contain these Spyware files but the resultant batch files needs to be run from a separate windows account that has administrator permissions.
Click my name to learn more and to view the source code to do the job.
Great post.Thanks Keith Dsouza.I am facing with so many Index.dat files.I found solution for my problem.I will download this CCleaner free software.