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General discussion

Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5 Folder??

Feb 24, 2004 10:31PM PST

Can anyone explain to me what is this folder used for?

I recently ran disk cleanup on my machine due to the lack of hard drive space and came across this folder under Temporary Internet Files. After running my cleaning programs I noticed that only the contents of Temporary Internet Files folder were cleaned while the Content.IE5 folder still had temporary files in it. I even found two important documents that I was working on in this folder!!

Can anyone tell me why this folder is here? Can I get rid of it?

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5 Folder??
Feb 24, 2004 11:11PM PST

In short, Microsoft codes in a SLOPPY way and litters the drive with obsolete files, directories and more. But you are asking "WHY?" which can never answered unless we were some fly on the wall at Microsoft.

I've deleted it before. It gets recreated if some software wanted it.

Best of luck,

Bob

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Re:Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5 Folder??
Feb 24, 2004 11:51PM PST

1. The Temporary Internet Files (TIF) AKA "browser caches" and what it contains are files which a user should not theoretically concern themselves with. Certain files are stored by default in the hard drive TIF folder from sites visited whether you want them or not. Each time a site is accessed and there is a need to display certain information, IE uses set options of whether to look in the TIF first to see if it's already there and if so, it is then displayed making things a little faster. Otherwise, the information necessary to display a page properly is download again for viewing as well as storing it in the TIF for possible later use.

2. Files stored in the TIF theoretically have a rollover based on the set percentage of hard drive to use, but does not apply to Cookie. An algorithms is supposed to takes place called "FIFO" (first in/first out) and supposed to remove oldest file as newer files are downloaded thus retaining the set usage percentage.

3. Since in my opinion, the files being in a constant flux with newer files being added and oldest files being purged as the set percentage is reached (FIFO), trying to personally control this is like sitting on the beach with a gallon bucket and trying to empty the ocean. Set the cache percentage of hard drive space use to something reasonable (Tools, Internet Options and on the General tab (Click to see an example screenshot), click Settings and in the Temporary Internet files section, use the odometer to select a reasonable setting in megabytes of hard drive space), [Q301057].

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You delete the files in it when you make a check in the little box....
Feb 25, 2004 9:02AM PST

where it says "delete all offline content" when deleting temporary internet files in the internet options.