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

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