Index.dat questions

For some reason I managed to only become paranoid about this file recently. I usually clean my registry, temporary files/directories, internet temporary files / histories, etc.

But the index.dat file I have never touched. Yesterday i was able to delete it by creating a new profile, but I still can't delete the index.dat files located in the systemprofile directory. Is it possible?

I have read that it's possible to delete index.dat files by closing explorer.exe and using cmd. I will try this tonight, but until then, can I get a confirmation?

Also, general questions:

- does index.dat only store cookies, search strings, histories, etc of events in internet explorer or does it include firefox as well? I use firefox mostly. I checked my index.dat file at home and it seemed grossly small considering I have been using windows for months.
- anything else I should be overtly worried about?

Why do you want to delete that file anyways? It takes up next to no space.

Index.dat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yeah I read that. I can't test the stuff at work so I'll play around at home.

I wanna delete it because it saves all of your history even if you tell internet explorer to delete it.

Firefox doesn't use anything related to IE, it stores all the info it uses elsewhere. Most likely somewhere in "userprofile\application data\Mozilla Firefox"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pureghetto

Yeah I read that. I can't test the stuff at work so I'll play around at home.

I wanna delete it because it saves all of your history even if you tell internet explorer to delete it.

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I am pretty sure that even if you delete a file like that the program will simply recreate it at some point because it will try to use it.

Any chance of it being the windows security log?

No. It is used with IE to track recently visited web pages and other such useless information. If you look it up in google there are many tools that claim to get around it and there are sites that explain how the file works.