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Thread ID: 39746 2003-11-16 02:59:00 XP TIP: Delete index.dat(s) Terry Porritt (14) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
192396 2003-11-17 02:06:00 These users and administrators are new to me, but I just logged off as administrator (Terry by default) and logged on as "Guest" and was able to delete index.dat in c:\documents and settings\Terry\Cookies. I now need to find a convenient way to do it. Terry Porritt (14)
192397 2003-11-17 02:09:00 Ive also forgotten to say my drive is formatted fat32, so NTFS permissions are not available for what thats worth. That is another learning curve to go through! Terry Porritt (14)
192398 2003-11-17 03:27:00 You should have stuck with W3.11 and DOS 6.22, Terry. Much easier. :D Graham L (2)
192399 2003-11-17 03:53:00 Yes I should have Graham, this is all like a foreign language to me :)

But here we are, here is a simple way of deleting index.dat, cribbed from the exp.cmd referenced in the site above.

cd %homedrive%%homepath%
del /s /q index.dat

That pasted into notepad and called index.cmd, and put into the startup folder as the reference above quotes for exp.cmd, appears to work as I want :)

I havent much idea what homedrive and homepath mean only that it must refer to c:\ and to 'documents'.

Perhaps others may like to try this and let me know how it goes for them. 		Terry Porritt (14)
192400 2003-11-17 04:33:00 %homedrive%, etc, will be environment variables. Try ECHO %homedrive%, or even the good old SET command. :D I bet they've had to put most of DOS in there ... because command line stuff works, and you can't get a GUI working without using stuff that works. B-) Graham L (2)
192401 2003-11-17 05:29:00 Exactly right Graham, in fact we're both right :)
echo %homedrive% returns C:

and echo %homepath% returns \Documents and Settings\Terry 		Terry Porritt (14)
192402 2003-11-17 06:36:00 Right, well I have to admire your perseverance on this one Terry but I have to admit defeat and am now out of this game. Nothing at all works here no matter what variation I try. I'll bookmark this thread however and the next time this box gets a format will try again because I suspect that there is something putting sticks in the works.

Incidentally are you running Win XP Pro or home? Wouldn't have thought it would make any difference but it's Win XP home here. 		Fire-and-Ice (3910)
192403 2003-11-17 07:33:00 Just a few corrections:

You can save two system variables by using %userprofile%. This gives the entire path to your profile directory, not use /Documents and Settings/user. However, it will limit your batch to only deleting the index.dat files in your profile.

And, to my knowledge, the exported registry value that held a value of something like 'C:\\Documents and Settings' actually requires the double backslash. So give it a try with that double backslash, those of you who tried it with a single one. 		agent (30)
192404 2003-11-17 07:40:00 Oh, can someone please remind me what's actually stored in the index.dat files so I can consider trying this?

I did know, but I've forgotten... :D *ignorance is bliss* 		agent (30)
192405 2003-11-17 07:45:00 Thanks agent. After some fidlling around earlier on I rechecked exporting a registry entry and it does make a double back slash. I dont seem to remember it doing this in win98, but perhaps it did?

I think I get your meaning about using %userprofile% , and the batch file does only delete the index.dat in my profile as you say. What Im trying to get is a global index.dat delete. 		Terry Porritt (14)
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