All kind of Cookies found, what to do ?

CCleaner for Windows
1

Despite I use CCleaner v3.13.1600 to remove cookies, a search with entry "cookies" on my C:\ reveals 29 items.

System : Windows XP Home Sp3.

I always have selected Cookies to be removed from IE and Firefox/Mozilla. So I was surprised to find so many cookie information left.

Items found are :

11 folders with the name 'Cookies'

18 cookies files with the next extensions :

dat (1x)

plist (2x) (seams from Apple)

sbe (1x) (seams from Spybot S&D)

sqlite (6x)

msf (2x) (seams from Mozilla)

txt (4x)

vdx (1x)

DetectPredictableCookies.exe.(some random characters).ini (1x).

5 of the 11 folders contain only an index.dat file :

C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Cookies

C:\Documents and Settings\<User with limited rights>\Local Settings\Temp\Cookies

C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temp\Cookies

C:\Documents and Settings\<User with administrator rights>\Cookies

C:\Windows\System32\Config\SystemProfile\Cookies

the other folders :

C:\Documents and Settings\<User with limited rights>\Cookies

contains index.dat + <username>@location[2].txt

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Cookies

contains index.dat + 11 administrator@name[1 or 2].txt

C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Cookies

contains index.dat + 2 files : word@location[1].txt.....................................................(one from 2004 !)

C:\Documents and Settings\NetworkService\Cookies

contains index.dat + 10 .txt files, the oldest ones with word@location[1].txt,

the more recent ones with a 8 letter/integer name.txt.

Apple leaves 2 folders with the Cookies.plist files.

The above mentioned 4 cookies.txt files are located in :

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxx.default\

C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\yyyyyy.default\

C:\Documents and Settings\NetworkService\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\zzzzzz.default\

C:\Documents and Settings\<User with administrator rights>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\qqqqqq.newprofile\

My questions are :

1. Is it correct that CCleaner leaves this stuff untouched or should I change CCleaner settings ?

2. Is there any indication of the presence of harmful cookies ?

3. Should I delete manually all those files and folders, or which ones can or must be kept ?

4. I could not find the meaning of the extensions dat, sqlite, vdx and the file DetectPredictableCookies.exe.(some random characters).ini ?

I hope my topic is not too hard to read.

2

Not a single suggestion (I agree, my topic is too hard to read).

So I take the decision to delete all the cookie stuff found.

And see what will happen.

3

For better/deeper cleaning results you should update your CCleaner to the latest version which can be found here: http://www.piriform....ccleaner/builds (v3.15.1643).

Also untick/uncheck these post-57694-0-81200200-1327845283_thumb.jpg if you want better cleaning results.

Cleaning cookies is pretty safe, except you might lose some website settings & passwords.

4

nodles, I regularly install the updates, but sometimes I miss a few of them due to the high release speed.

Is there a significant difference in cookie processing between v3.13.1600 and v3.15.1643 ?

About your valuable uncheck advice : one of them was checked (by default I guess) until now.

During the deletion of my found cookie related files and folders the index.dat files in

C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Cookies

C:\Documents and Settings\NetworkService\Cookies

C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Cookies

could not be deleted, the other stuff vanished easely.

Thank you for your response :)