The index.dat file is a file you find on your Windows computer, and it is often locked or in use, however there are ways to delete and remove this file. This index.dat file basically contains names of files, or pointers to the actual data files, and this is also what you see in your explorer window when you look in the temporary files folder. This is why you see all the files listed there even when the cache is cleared and deleted. Even when you see the names listed in this case, clicking on them will not bring up the actual data file for viewing, as the data is deleted by you and the index.dat files are really only a pointer to the actual data files.

Now since these files are in use, they need to be removed at startup when you reboot, as that way it can be deleted before your system locks them. Once deleted your system will simply recreate them again, which is fine, as they are recreated without all the names stored in them as they were previously. If you are using the Complete Cleanup software (this can be downloaded on the SoftDD disk cleaner software page), you will notice that it has a locked file cleanup. What this does is track your system and build a file to automatically clean these at startup for you, as I have mentioned above. Sometimes your system may even lock the files before they can be cleaned at startup, it depends how your system is setup and what you have running ,etc. In this case you can still clean these index.dat files by using the options on your web browser (note that the browser and system are what locks the index.dat files, so they can actually clean them without rebooting since they hold the locks on it). Do the following steps:

On Complete Cleanup, click the Search Engines button and then click the "Clear Search Engines" button on the next window. Now you have your internet properties, click the "Delete Files" button, and be sure to check the box on the next window that says "delete all offline content". If you do not check the box then it will not clean everything. Now click the ok button after the box has a check in it. Click the "clear history" button at the bottom, and the "delete cookies" button, and all your main index.dat files have now been cleared. This links directly into your browser, so the index files can be cleared this way in addition to the locked file cleanup that takes place during bootup. Since this links directly into your system browser, this will always work for clearing the index.dat files (unless of course there is some type of system problem with your computer).

Note that you can build your own dos bat file if you do not have Complete Cleanup and want to clear the locked index files automatically. To do so you need to use the "del c:\......\index.dat (and enter the path name of course, then add the bat file to your startup menu and it will run everytime you reboot).

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