I was just fixing a laptop and realized most users are unaware of the open data on their PC. Thought I'd pass this on to others. What you feel is inconsequential data, is highly profitable. How you surf, what you buy, what you read and the value of your demographic profile is profit. And you all ‘give’ it away daily. You want proof. Go to Windows Explorer and do a file search for ‘index.dat’ files. Now look at the file sizes. Index.dat files hold your entire history on the web and they are accessible by sites. Not only that but all of the email that has been sent or received through Outlook or Outlook Express is also being logged. According to Microsoft, these files are used to cache visited Web sites to help speed up the loading of Web pages in Internet Explorer. Not true because clearing the Temporary Internet Files leaves DAT files alone. And you can’t delete or clean them while Windows is running. It takes a software application and a restart. Also, their relative size does affect you PC's performance. Stop giving your data away and add space to your hard drive! If your using CCleaner it will delete the DAT files but not in all directories, just IE directories. If you'd like to review, locate, and delete 'all' those files try "Index.dat Suite" It's free and works with most OS's. Load the program. To get started open the program and then the help file (the icon with the question mark on a book up top) click on the "Index.dat Files" directory. Read, read, read. Basically you will be locating, viewing and deleting. View a few of the small files before you delete them to understand what type of info is given. Opening a large DAT file will take some time. Note: When viewing a DAT file use the "internal viewer". And remember this is a weekly thing, the files keep recording after the cleaning. Happy Cleaning!!
Thanks for this post. I downloaded RegSeeker and ran twice. my computer is a lot faster. Now please explain how I find and stop software that auto runs at startup and obviously slows down my computer. PS Needs to be in intermediate user language
You can use regseeker for that also! Click on "Startup Entries" in the left side menu. Highlight the program you want stopped with one left click. Then right click it and choose 'Startup Entries" then "Disable". Vooo Ahhh Laaa you have stopped those nag and drag softwares!!!! Note: I've found recently that the Sun JAVA Updates are becomming a NAG software. Everytime I delete it, it comes back. Even after making changes in the JAVA console. Looking for the source on that now.
