Several months ago, a nephew visited for several weeks. Apparently, he accessed a number of 'adult' sites on our computer. Since then ... despite repeated attempts to Clear History ... we have encountered a number of embarassing addresses showing on the address line when certain letters are entered. We recently downloaded CCleaner in the hopes that it would eliminate those addresses, but it hasn't. Any suggestions?
Tnfarmer
P.S. The items are not in our "favorites' (as far as we know).
Thanks for the great (and easy) suggestion! Changed my Auto Complete Settings this a.m. and those embarassing addresses are now gone ... or at least they don't show up!
Appreciate your help.
Tnfarmer
CCleaner does its job cleaning history in Internet Explorer 7.
The only addresses showing on the address line when certain letters are entered are in my favorites.
If you have many favorites, you can right click on anyone and click sort by name.
Find the ones you don't want, right click and delete them.
You can turn off Auto Complete by doing the following.
Open IE click on Tools > Internet options > Content > Auto complete Settings
De-select Web addresses only, or all of them if you want then click OK.
Actually, I did view each item in our Favorites file to determine if any of them might be linked to the unwanted addresses, but that didn't seem to be the case. I don't think our nephew would have put any of the websites he visited in our Favorites anyway. Some of the addresses are clearly the result of Google searches but it's hard to tell where they might be in our favorites. Perplexing.
Tnfarmer
You may want to look through your favorites and delete the ones you don't want.
I have deleted my Google toolbar but the addresses still show up if I turn Autocomplete back on. Maybe CCleaner didn't work because I'm not using the right version of IE. How do I tell which version I'm using?
Could this be where they're coming from?
Toolbars save information like history, autofill, bookmarks.
Even if you do use a toolbar, I can't see it affecting the IE address bar.
I have deleted my Google toolbar but the addresses still show up if I turn Autocomplete back on. Maybe CCleaner didn't work because I'm not using the right version of IE. How do I tell which version I'm using?
Hello again tnfarmer,
I see you have had good help.
At least you told us that you are using the Google toolbar.
Hopefully no others have been involved. We shall see.
I took so long since I had a lot of reading and testing to do and I had to use different PCs during this time.
Many different methods have been used over the years to store URL history by many browsers and also by many "Toolbars". Now as then there are some conflicts that occur.
After testing on at least 2 PCs to a successful conclusion, I advise that you do the following.
Be aware that you will lose all previous searched URLs. You will not affect your "Favorites".
1. Uninstall the Google toolbar again.
2. Using the IE "Tools" select Delete Browsing History and then select "delete history" then select Close.
3. Run CCleaner and select Cleaner > Internet Explorer > History and also Delete Index.dat files .
4. Reboot
5. Start Internet Explorer and you should find that you no longer find those entries when you type in the IE address bar.
If you do then there must be other things involved than just the Google toolbar.
6. If all is well reinstall the Google toolbar and unselect any items that Google wants if you do not want it like storing History on your PC or reporting stats to Google. That is up to you.
Hope this works for you. I can't test the Yahoo toolbar for you.
davy, this is something that annoys me as well and can only be displayed when you begin to type something into the Address field in IE and all previous typed entries appear as an aid to help you in selecting old entries.
I just ignore the advice and just keep typing the URL I want.
davy, this is something that annoys me as well and can only be displayed when you begin to type something into the Address field in IE and all previous typed entries appear as an aid to help you in selecting old entries.
I just ignore the advice and just keep typing the URL I want.
I know what you mean.
I am sure to hear much moaning and groaning when the other guys type in prunes.com and it doesn't automatically suggest some URLs.
I am testing these Google options such as "store search history on my computer" and "Browse by name in the address bar" if they don't hang me first.
These other users have to worry about snoopy neighbors and grand-children and such. I understand their concern.
davy, this is something that annoys me as well and can only be displayed when you begin to type something into the Address field in IE and all previous typed entries appear as an aid to help you in selecting old entries.
I just ignore the advice and just keep typing the URL I want.
If it annoys you, just turn it off like tnfarmer did.
If it annoys you, just turn it off like tnfarmer did.
I like AutoComplete but I would like CCleaner to clean them out when I run it but I guess the entries are stored in the registry somewhere and if I find the registry location then I will include it in a registry clean.
I think I (we) have solved it. I downloaded Internet Explorer version 7 and then ran CCleaner, and all the embarrassing addresses have disappeared. Thanks for all your help ... everybody's really.