From: Paul Bailey, [log in to unmask] Date 4 March 2000 Subject: IE5 and Offline Browsing Problems On the 15th January Paul Bailey wrote: Has anyone experienced problems with IE5 and offline browsing via the "make available for offline browsing" check-box and routine? This was working fine for me until recently, but now although I can make a new favourite that will appear in the favourites list, pages viewed, or synchronisations, are not available offline. Since then I have found out that all my problems stemmed from the index.bat file used by IE5. Apparently, after a period of time and with sufficient use, this file makes IE become unstable due to its size extending beyond a certain point(500Kbs is a figure quoted). Deleting the cache and history from within IE's - tools, options etc, will not solve this problem, as the Index.bat file remains. The solution is to delete the index.bat file itself, and Windows IE will automatically recreate the folder/file when next started. There is a free "patch" to do this which saves doing it manually, (which entails starting in a DOS session and using the deltree command to delete the index.bat file). This patch is downloadable from Winmag.com, the exact address being "Hot Fixes" http://www.winmag.com/fixes/. There is also a useful link to cache managers at Tucows.http://www.wizsys.com/tweakie.html also has a shareware program to solve this, and which manages the cache as well. This is a problem that I have read described as "Widely known", but it took me a long time to find out. Microsoft do not, to the best of my knowledge, appear to acknowledge it as a problem---all very strange, or am I missing something? Having run the patch/scripted DOS command, every thing is now working perfectly. Even if you still have the offline facility working, this problem will start to degrade performance long before actual failure. Try using Start - Find -"Index.dat "to se if the file size has become excessive ( mine was over 15 megs!!) Has anybody else come across this aspect of IE? Paul Bailey PCSOFT maintains many useful files for download visit our download web page at: http://nospin.com/pc/files.html