Spider And Index.dat

Greetings.

I have downloaded Spider after learning about index.dat and other Windows "snoops/trackers ".

I use Windows ME and when I ran the spider it showed oodles of data stored.

Which unnerved me since I use XXX (msdos command at startup), history kill, and internet sweeper.

(I use my computer for online business/purchasing/bills etc. and do not want the info stored.)

That brings me to the "problem ".

I ran Spider and had it clean the long list of stuff and reboot.

After the reboot I ran it again and all the files were still there!
(And I had checked the appropriate boxes in "preference ")

So what I did was use the paths and found the folders and have manually deleted data in the various index. dat files. (7 files!)
That is until I came to the last one:

C:\WINDOWS\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5

My computer though the folder options is set to show all including hidden - shows my temporary internet files as empty. Yet when in search I direct the computer specifically to the path above - EUREKA I found the hidden booger! (the ones I had deleted that were hidden were either 16 or 32)

It contains an index.dat file with a size of 784!!!!!!

I can not open it.
I can not delete it.
I can not rename it.
I can not move it.

And apparently the Spider program can not either.

I copied the index.dat file and opened it with Notepad only to see "gibberish" and lots of URLs.

So - Does anyone know how I can empty this dat file and resave it and have it empty?



And sorry but there is NO good, honest reason for this!! The fact it is hidden "plus some" tells you it is not for a honest reason.

 

JETS,

Spider doesn't work in ME due to the poor access to DOS by that system.

Spider relies on being able to delete all copies of the index.dat file while in dos booting mode. That's why you are asked to reboot after invoking it.

There are some patches out there that supposedly allow ME to access dos during boot up but I can't say if they would help you. Try a Google search with WINDOWS ME DOS as the parameters.

If you want to do the work manually, you could boot to a windows98 boot disk and delete the files that way. They are all listed by Spider while in the GUI mode. Usually there are three or more of them.

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful but I have never owned or used ME.

I'll do a little more research and let you know if I find something useful. In the meantime perhaps some ME expert will drop in and help.

I can tell you that the index.dat file is a cache type file and contains all the necessary information to recreate the files that can compromise your privacy. When you delete it in dos, it will recreate itself in Windows but will be empty, even though it will indicate several bytes in size. That's typical of cache files.