Question about index.dat file deletion.

Hi

I know index.dat is not really used anymore, but my question relates to them, as I the computer I'm trying to figure out something on is on XP and used old IE browsers.

Lets say I wanted to clean the temp internet files index.dat file on a machine running XP.

What exactly is happening here? I know the content is removed, but..

Is the folder "Temporary Internet Files" being deleted as a whole? (thus that folder has a new creation date)

Is the index.dat (which resides in the above folder) file being deleted or just cleaned? I.E if I used CCleaner would the index.dat file have a new creation date, or remain the same?

Thanks all for the help :)