The mysterious vanishing files!!!

[Dubber Dan]

I've got a user with a roaming profile that comes in at almost 95MB!!!! Now I've gone into clear it out and have deleted all the usual suspects like temp file, internet explorer cache (this is set to only 2MB anyway) and what have you but it's still huge.

I've gone into explorer and tracked down a 43MB folder (the temporary internet files within local settings) but when I go into it there are only eleven 1KB cookies. I've check it's set to show all files but still there's no 43MB of contents within the folder.

Any ideas folks?

[classicsoftware]

Download eraser (http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php)

Set it to erase the entire folder in question. It will give you 2 check boxes one to erase all sub folders check that and the one that and the one that says only sub folders. leave that one unchecked.

It should eliminate everything except index.dat.

[Paul Komski]

The Index.dat file may actually BE the problem. It is often hidden and Ghost Hacker's was 500MB, for example, in http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003089.html

The original link to the Riddler's article is now dead but it can be read at http://p083.ezboard.com/featinkfrm12.showMessage?topicID=10.topic

Spider (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,6481,00.asp) is one of the utilities that will let you wipe out your index.dat files - if you can't do it manually.

[classicsoftware]

Spider has never worked on any of my computers.

If you have windows 98, you can delete index.dat by booting up in MS dose mode. In XP or 2K i'm sure you can kill index.dat by logging on as a different user.

[Steve]

A little more info along the lines of CS.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/del_index.dat/

[Paul Komski]

Nice link Steve.

BTW there is another nice way of dealing with bloated index.dat file(s) and that is to keep the TIF (or other) Folder on a RAM-drive; it then gets recreated at every reboot.