Clearing History on Internet Explorer...advanced

[Jebber3000]

Ok, so I know how to go to tools, internet options, and then am able to clear history, delete cookies, and delete temp internet files..

However, when you hit the history button..and click on "search" you can find old sites visited.. Why are they still there? I thought I cleared the history.. I did a few searches, and there are sites on there from months ago! How do I get rid of all this? I want a totally clean slate on my browser.

[j4mes]

Turn off autocomplete.

Or you could always get a better browser [kmeleon.sourceforge.net] :P

-- James.

[smokeyb]

And welcome to WebmasterWorld jebber3000

[j4mes]

Oh, and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

beat me to it smokeyb! :)

[digitalv]

Quit looking at Porn and you won't have to worry about it :P

heh

If you're using Windows XP (or maybe other versions of Windows, not sure though) Clear your history through the browser and close it. Then right-click your Task bar and go to Properties. Click the START MENU tab and then the "CUSTOMIZE" button.

You'll see a button labeled "Clear" - click that one and it should do the trick.

[Jebber3000]

Hey everyone, thanks for your suggestions.. and thanks for the warm welcome.

Anyways, I tried all your methods last night.. to no avail. I went to check on autocomplete, and none of the boxes were checked.. I cleared forms as well..

I also tried right clicking the task bar, going to customize.. and hitting the clear button.. but when I clicked the clear button nothing happened.. it was as if I never clicked it at all..

Soooo, I went back online.. and when I ran a search under history.. some old stuff came up.

By the way, NO.. I am not looking at Porn! I am trying to plan a vacation for my anniversary (which is meant to be a surprise).. My wife is nosey and is trying to pry out of me where we are headed.. I am afraid that she will try to find where I have been looking online.. and right now, she could.. just by searching the word "vacation" under a history search brings up many sites that I have been too.. and simply clearing history does not make the search results go away.

Please Help Keep my Anniversary gift a surprise!

[Leosghost]

search for "spider" or "spider 116" ..
Its the best way to clear your .dat if you dont know how to do it your self via the register or the hive ..
or
"cleanup"...
They're both free and have no ads whatsoever or spy ware or crud or all the usual stuff ..

BTW ..Evidence eliminator for all those pron surfers leaves all the addresses in there just better hidden .. :) ..

Or if you know what you are doing go into the "guts" and edit the reg yourself ...

only if you know what you are doing ...

[Jebber3000]

Anybody able to help with my problems?

I appreciate any of your advice.

[pixelkat]

one caveat about Spider. Unfortunately, you can't pick and choose which items to delete from your entire system. I found that out the hard way!

I haven't used it in a long time, so maybe there are more features now, but Spider allows you to select deletion among a few broad categories. if you choose to erase your cache, you erase all your cache, including some vital basic things. There is a restore function, however, which saved MY behind!

as much as I am appalled that Microsoft would write a function into its operating system that would store every friggin' web site traveled to since the first time I used my computer, I ended up restoring everything except browser history.

that's why it is so important to remove hard drives from old computers we get rid of. buried deep in the operating system are hidden files that tell everything about us. even when information is erased from the hard drive, hidden information remains there for those who know how to get at it.

it's interesting, however, to load Spider just to see all the stuff being stored on your computer after you THOUGHT you deleted it.

I reaffirm that Spider is no casual application! it can really mess with your system if you don't know what you are doing.

cheers,
kat

[2oddSox]

Deleting the history through the 'tools > options' should really do the trick, but if you want to be selective about which items you delete, just right-click the offending items in the history panel when it's up, and choose delete. You'll see the history is broken down into sections like 'last month', 'this week' etc. You can right-click on a whole section and delete it manually or expand it to be a bit more selective.

Dunno why yours isn't clearing out through the 'options' to delete tho'.

(anyhow, deleting just the items you don't want the missus to see looks a lot less damning than an entirely clean history. She'll definitely know you're surfing porn then ;)

Good luck, and enjoy the anniversary.

[Jebber3000]

Well, just clearing the history does work.. just not all the way.. Here is what happens.. Say I go through Internet Options and clear the history.. then I click on the history tab.. it will show nothing, for any date. But then say under the history box, I hit "search".. and type in a word like "vacation".. it will turn up all these different vacation sites that I have visited. I thought this was weird.. so I tried a search on some sites I haven't been at in a while.. and yep, they turned up on the search as well..

[2oddSox]

That's weird. I've tried replicating that scenario but my history clears fine - including the History search facility.

What version IE are you running, and are you sure you don't have any third-party toolbars or add-ons that might be getting in the way?

[PatrickDeese]

I would guess that you have some sort of toolbar that is remembering your searches.

If you have cleared out the history and cookies, and cleared the autocomplete, that will erase everything.

Why don't you download the Mozilla Browser and not let it install the shortcut icons and do you vacation searching with that - its unlikely that she'll bother to look for an alternative browser.

[Jebber3000]

Now that I think about it (I don't know if this is related).. but I checked the history the other day while I was messing with this.. and it showed an item "my computer" in the Internet Explorer history.. I clicked it, and there was some Word files I was using.. Is that bizarre? I thought the history was only for URLs and such..

[Jebber3000]

Another thing.. I used to use AOL for my connection.. then I cancelled that and got this Netzero.. I connected, and all my old aol history was still in there..

[2oddSox]

The 'My Computer' is normally shown in the IE history, and it will show Word documents and the such that you've accessed. So that part, at least, is normal.

[smokeyb]

Whenever I delete everything in my history, I too have some that stay there when go back online. In the past this has been a topic before, and I seem to remember that there was no definitive solution then. The thing is: the only addresses that remain are of things like a hospital, a gov site other things in than vein, nothing smutty or evil and I definitely don't have spyware. Now, everyone of these sites I haven't visited in months if not years, but they are still in my bookmarks... I wonder if that could have anything to do with it? Are the urls that remain on your comp, bookmarked?

[Jebber3000]

No, I have never bookmarked a site. For example.. a long time ago.. say about a year or so (back when I was using AOL) I set up a yahoo email account to use to order things online.. so that my regular email would not get bombarded with spam.. I used it for about a month.. and never again.. Right now, if I do a search under history of "yahoo".. it will show URL's of yahoo mail with that address.. I mean, that was over a year ago.. And nothing seems to clear it.. Would that Spider thing clear it? Why is it still there?

[smokeyb]

Here's another odd thing: the addresses that stay put on my machine, begin with http--www instead of http://www? What's all that about?

[Jebber3000]

Ok, so here is the update.. I downloaded Spider v1.16 last night and ran it to clear my .dat files.. it did.. I also tried to run the other program called "spider bite".. but that did not seem to do anything..

The .dat file was removed.. and all temp internet files gone.. but it did not help me with my dilemma.. When you run a search on history, old stuff still comes up.. I even tried deleting them one-by-one..but it won't let me.. It confirms that I want to delete, I say yes.. but it doesn't delete it..

Any new thoughts?

[MatthewHSE]

A Google search for clear internet explorer history [google.com] yields some possible solutions.

[wavebird23]

I agree, you can find a lot of advanced clear history downloads at google. But in most cases, there is spyware or viruses on the software you download. Be careful when you download them!

[Leosghost]

What is your OS? and browser 'cos here we are working in the dark ..
Spiderbite is just the automatique version of spider..
if you have the same gui as the one I know you will first hit the key with the magnifying glass ..
this will show you the contents of your .dat ( BTW there are more than one .dat on your machine and they don't all do the same thing )
then go to preferences..little blue/ red /yellow graphic ...
Chose delete for everything ..make sure you selected your "drive" and not just your floppy ...
confirm and then run by clicking the "ambulance" ..

Now get "clean up" ..5 this is because spider dooes not include the possibility to remove "typed urls"..
read clean up ....Check its options for what you want ...run it ...
then go to your IE advanced dialog boxes and untick ( auto complete or whatever Redmond have called this "feature" on your box ...
Then get back to us ....
this ought to work ..but I 'spose if we all go gently then we could walk you thru a reg edit ...
you didn't mention "Clean up" ..and I maybe wasn't clear enough but you will normally need both this and spider if you dont want to do a manual clean ...

For anyone interested if you really want to shock yourselves how easy it is to find out what you have been doing on any machine ...try searching (amongst others )"restoration" ...allthough it tells you that you should copy found files onto another "drive" which is true if you want to be sure that the copies work ..you can copy files into the same directory on the same drive as restoration ( BTW it's another piece of "clean" freeware ..by a very nice guy name of Brian )...
It'll usually find every jpeg or zip etc you looked at in the last 60 days and all webpages etc the images are usually viewable and the webpages have their tiles visible ..and its not the best of it's kind ..but the only free one I know of that doesn't contaminate your machine ...

[Jebber3000]

Hey guys,

FYI, I have Windows XP..

I was looking for that "cleanup 5" .. but had some trouble finding it.. do you have a website? I typed in cleanup 5 into yahoo and got the phonebook..

[Leosghost]

not "clean up 5" ( thats just me typing badly on this here french keyboard ..I meant to hit the left bracket but was still in caps ) ...Don't think I can post the url here ..mods? ..if not I'll sticky you ..

[Leosghost]

They said it's ok ..and found a newer vesrion!

it's here [cleanup.stevengould.org ]

This should do it ....thanks mods

[Abdelrhman Fahmy]

Tools>Internet Options> Content TAB > AutoComplete...>Clear Forms

or search download.com for a history cleaner application and i'm recommending washee

[Abdelrhman Fahmy]

Tools>Internet Options> Content TAB > AutoComplete...>Clear Forms

or search download.com for a history cleaner application and i'm recommending washee

[msgraph]

XP has a nasty habit of storing typed urls so you might want to take care of that too if you haven't already. Not tied to your problem but just in case...

Click Start -> Run -> type regedit

HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Internet Explorer -> TypedURLs

Select URL1 to URLX

Delete

[msgraph]

Ok, give this a try, I tried some things and it seems like this did the trick.

I did a "text in files" search for urls that would show up in the history search. I found the files but they wouldn't show up in windows explorer even if I turned all the settings to show any and every file.

I have a non-english OS so some paths may be different. I had to do this as another user to get it to work right for me.

Create another user account with admin settings.

Close your current session and log in with the new one.

Set all your view file options to where you can view hidden and system files.

Open windows explorer

Go to Documents and Settings -> The User account you want to clean -> Local Configuration -> Temporary Internet Files -> Content.IE5

Delete everything is this folder.

Also go to the history folder and delete everything under History.IE5 (The urls were showing up in an index.dat files there as well)

Close that session and re-open your original user account

Try the search and see if it still shows up. If so delete the new user account you created.