Increase your Internet Speed by Removing the index.dat files

These files will significantly slow down your computer’s internet speed  because they may grow up 100 megabytes. These large files require CPU constant access and bandwidth. Microsoft claims the files were originally designed to increase internet speed by mimicking a server. But it does the opposite because these files are re-record your internet history. This requires double the bandwidth of other files.

 

According to Microsoft, these files are used to cache visited Web sites to help speed up the loading of Web pages in Internet Explorer. Obviously this cannot be the case because when you clear the Temporary Internet Files the "index.dat" files remain behind and continue to grow. If you delete or clear the Temporary Internet Files, there is absolutely no need to index the URL cache because those files no longer exist.

 

Index.dat files are hidden files on your computer that contain all tracks of your online activity, where have you been on internet, what sites you visited, list of URL-s, files and documents you recently accessed. Index.dat files stored on your computer are obviously a potential privacy threat as they can be found and viewed without your knowledge.

Internet Explorer gives you the ability to remove and clear some of the information that it has saved to your computer after visiting sites. But unfortunately it does not clean all of it, including the index.dat file. Therefore it is possible for someone with the right tools to see which sites have been visited and which files have been downloaded simply by viewing the contents of the index.dat file stored on your computer.

 

With the increasing threat of spyware and malicious web-sites redirecting you to illegal or pornographic material this lack-of privacy means that these sites will be stored and viewable in the index.dat even if they were visited unintentionally.

 

If you go poking around in [c]:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\History\, for example, you will find several index.dat files laying around. (Note: several of the directories that I listed in the path are hidden directories.)

There are three index.dat files residing in the following locations.

On Windows NT/2000/XP/2003:
\Documents and Settings\[username]\Cookies\index.dat
\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\History\History.IE5\index.dat
\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat

 

 

1. You have to do an MS-DOS boot disk, this is a simple task- in windows explorer just right click on floppy disk and select format, then click “create an MS-DOS startup disk”.Then reboot and go to your Bios (reboot and press Del to bring in Bios) and select the first boot option the removable disk that is your floppy disk.

If you do not want to use a startup disk you can reboot and press F8 to bring up the Troubleshooting Boot Menu.
Select: Safe Mode w/Command Prompt and press Enter. Log on as Administrator.

Once the Command Prompt screen loads, you will need to type the exact path to your Administrator account.
[Example]
"C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files"

Note: The paths here are used for examples only, the exact location may vary on different systems.

2. It is possible to delete the index.dat by rebooting your computer and using the MS-DOS boot disk you just created, normally you can then access the drive and manually locate and delete all those .dat files mentioned above.

 

But I indicate you to use for example total commander or norton commander for quicker action.For doing that first you have to download total commander or norton commander and install them in your drive c:/ .Then after you create an MS-DOS startup disk, restart and go to the drive in which you installed the program : for example C:\totalcmd for total commander and run TOTALCMD.EXE. After the program is loaded is a simple task to go manually, locate and delete all those .dat files.

 

In conclusion : Speed up your PC on the internet by eliminating these files.