Taking Out the Internet Explorer Trash
Internet Explorer is one of the worst offenders for accumulating garbage. In fact, you might be amazed at just how much data Internet Explorer collects. A single session with a graphics-filled Web
site can chew up a significant portion of your hard drive because Internet Explorer downloads all those files. In many cases, it holds on to those files just in case you need them later. You can see some
of these files in the \Documents and Settings\User Name\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files folder of each user who accesses the machine. Other file stores appear in the \Documents and
Settings\User Name\Local Settings\History, \Documents and Settings\User Name\Cookies, and \WINDOWS\Downloaded Program Files. Fortunately, you won’t have to spend your time looking for trash because the following sections show how to clean it up.
Getting Rid of Cached Data
Of all the information that Internet Explorer collects, the least useful is cached data. The theory is that by caching all of the data for a Web site locally, Internet Explorer can improve performance when you
visit that site again. It really is a good theory, it just doesn’t seem to work very well in practice and you end up losing a lot of hard drive space as a result for almost no performance gain. The common reasons this strategy fails include:
? You don’t visit the Web site often enough to make the cache effective.
? The cache size is too small.
? The Web site includes any number of tags that forces a refresh of the content so you end up downloading it anyway.
? You visit so many Web sites that Internet Explorer removes the cached data before you visit it again.
No matter what reason the cache doesn’t work, the storage problem can become significant. Fortunately, you can clean out the data cache and restore the space to your system. (Depending how
much time you spend on the Internet, you should clean the cache at least once a month and preferably once a week.) To begin, open the Internet Options applet located in the Control Panel. You can also
access this applet using the Tools Internet Options command of Internet Explorer. Select the General tab and you’ll see the Temporary Internet Files group shown in Figure 3.13.
Figure 3.13
Clear temporary Internet files as needed to keep your system clean.
Normally, you can simply click Delete Files to clear the cache. However, sometimes you want to be a little more selective in what you delete. Perhaps you do visit a particular Web site every day. The
“Controlling a Voracious Drive Space Appetite” section of the hapter discusses how you can perform selective removal of files.
Taken From : Microsoft Windows XP Power Optimization