Temporary Internet Files

 

The Temporary Internet Files (TIF) are stored in another folder, the so-called browser cache. The following shareware program can be used to examine, analyze and change the cache folder in most comfortable way:

Browser Cache Switch (BCS) for Internet Explorer®

In the TIF folder, there are also index.dat files like in history, but the format is a little different. These index files contain the URLs, the locations of the files in the local browser cache, the file names used by Internet Explorer® for storing them, and other information. For a more detailed discussion of the structure of this index file refer to the article:

Cache management in Internet Explorer ® 4.0

The index.dat file is used to retrieve files in the cache that are specified only by an URL and not by their file name. This index file provides the interface between URLs and file names stored locally in the cache.

There are many tools available for analyzing the browser cache. One of them is

Index Reader for Internet Explorer ® 5, 6 or 7

This program is based only on the information in the index file and can therefore be used even in those difficult cases, if pages cannot be shown by Internet Explorer® when option 'View files' for temporary internet files is used. During browsing session, some URLs that are created individually by active servers do not appear in the address bar and are not shown in the list of TIF by Internet Explorer®. If such files are stored in the cache, the Index Reader used in Cache Mode can retrieve them.