IE 7 History Missing after using CCleaner

[hesyst]

It didn't do it - I tried all of the above steps - but to no avail. The problem didn't go away unless I copied the history folder over from the new user I created - then it worked fine keeping all of my history that was already there and adding to it each day.

 

No - I didn't install any other software programs before the history "disappeared" - It happened right after I installed and ran CCleaner the first time.

 

Here's what I've discovered. My history folder (with all of my history in it) as well as the Cookies folder were still located in my Local Settings\Temp folder (a carryover from IE6 maybe???). I looked at the settings in IE7 and they're supposed to be in the Local Settings folder (cookies in teh Temporary Internet Files folder.

 

Ran CCleaner and it confirms that the history. index. dat and desktop.ini files are where they are supposed to be - but they are apparently blank.

 

Checked the registry settings - they are consisient with CCleaner's analysis.

 

So that explains why I could copy the History folder from another user and get my old history back - it must somehow "point" to the other folder. I was unable to find any reference to that anywhere in my registry - but still that's where it's located.

 

So what happened? Not sure - somehow no matter what I did my history would remain in that subfolder of the Local Settings\Temp folder.

 

I finally gave up on trying to diagnose this any further.

 

I removed IE7 - which wasn't easy - it couldn't be removed from Add/Remove Programs - so I had to do it with the Recovery Console.

 

Then I did a repair installation of XP using the slipstreamed SP3 disc I created when I upgraded to SP3 .

 

After that I did a new installation of IE7 - and eveything now works as it should now.

 

History can be seen in IE7 - it's located in the proper folder - and all is well.

 

Time spent trying to diagnose the problem - many days and hours...

 

Time spent removing IE7 & reinstalling XP - less than 2 hours....

 

A drastic measure that I really didn't want to do at all in case ti screwed some other programs up- but it was worth it sine it solved the problem and everything else seems to be working as it should. The only thing I had to do after the repair install was delete and reinstall my Norton Internet Security 2008 and do a bunch of updates for that. Every other program that I've tried seems to be working normally so far.....

 

So - did CCleaner cause the problem? Most likely not - BUT there was something in there that was making the history work properly even though it was in the wrong location - and I'd say that CCleaner probably took out something in one of the index.dat files (or the registry) that made it all happen.

 

Not a mistake by the CCleaner program - but it changed the settings on my particular computer so that it didn't work right.

 

Now everything seems to be where it should be and is working fine. At least so far.......

 

Seems like this might be a fairly common problem based on the number of view this post has had so far....

[maffw]

I had this problem after running CCleaner on Windows XP Professional service pack 2 the other week and discovered this thread via Google when looking for a solution, although nothing in the above worked (apart from a re-install of XP but that's far too drastic!).

 

So I tried an experiment and for me I have cured the problem by deleting the hidden desktop.ini file in the folder above the history store

 

To do this, close IE7, then you need to open a command prompt in Windows via Start | Run | type Cmd in the box.

 

Hopefully this will open a command prompt already in the

 

c:\documents and settings\[user name]\ folder

 

Change the command prompt's directory to the local settings folder by typing

 

cd local settings

 

then type

 

attrib -h -s desktop.ini

 

to remove the hidden and system settings of desktop.ini

 

then type

 

del desktop.ini

 

to delete it.

 

Reboot the computer, restart IE7, history functionalilty seems to be restored and the desktop.ini file appears to be recreated by Windows XP.

 

Hope that helps.