Index.dat

A recent analysis of index.dat files on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system revealed hundreds of entries. Index.dat files are hidden files that contain information about visited urls, cookies and other cache related files. The information are only recorded when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is being used to browse the Internet. What many users do not realize is that data is also recorded if a software program makes use of the Internet Explorer rendering engine.

A few software programs are available to view and delete the contents of index.dat files. We have mentioned some of them earlier here at Ghacks like the index.dat viewer or the index.dat suite. Another tool for the purpose is the index.dat analyzer which can display and clean the contents of index.dat files as well.

If you want to prevent that Windows is writing data to those files in future sessions you need to set the file attribute to read-only. Another possibility would be to run CCleaner regularly (this can be automated) to clean the index.dat files.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday January 4, 2009 -
Tags:block index.dat, clear index.dat, index.dat, index.dat suite, index.dat viewer, internet explorer tips, internet-explorer, windows privacy

Responses so far:

1. IanG says:

   January 4, 2009 at 2:01 pm

   I have tried just using CCleaner to clean Index.dat files,and found it not to be affective. Now i use a specific app to clean them up.

   Reply