Is this problem with Windows XP real?

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JEBB · #1 Post by **JEBB** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:44 pm

I was at a computer club meeting yesterday and there was one discussion about how Windows creates many files that over a relatvely short time significantly degrade the system's performance. One person there, taken by most present as being something of an expert, said yes it is a problem and that the only way to deal with it is to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows and everything else. He said it probably needs to be done once or twice a year.

Is this problem real? Is nuking and repaving the only way to deal with it?

#2 Post by **Kyocera** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:50 pm

They may be talking about the index.dat files, which do grow over a period of time. There are some tools that allow you to delete this data. These are hidden files that log a lot of information.

bigtiger · #3 Post by **bigtiger** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:50 pm

I am not an expert. But I would say it is true. Windows is creating all sorts of temp files in various places and most often the time, Windows "forgot" to clean them out and those files. there might be other reasons too.

#4 Post by **jdhurst** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 5:28 pm

The only files I know about that degrade performance are the index.dat files. Get CacheSentry (free or pro), set your IE cache to 80Mb (the default of 1.2Gb is utter insanity), and set Cache Sentry for 20Mb. I have kept my cache at 20Mb since 1999 and NT4 with no ill effects. Storage of temp files will not degrade performance so far as I know. ... JD Hurst

#5 Post by **bill bolton** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:13 pm

My first piece of advice is to be wary of experts at computer clubs!

JEBB wrote:Windows creates many files that over a relatvely short time significantly degrade the system's performance

Over time there are variety of things which impact Windows system performance, but not over a "relatively short time" for most users who are using a PC or laptop for general purpose computing.

Its possible to get caught up in a "performance chase" for no good reason, and a computer club is great place catch that particular ailment! Unless you are experiencing particular performance issues, IMO it is not worth getting overly concerned about.

In terms of general housekeeping, there are a variety of tools which can keep a Windows XP installation relatively tidy and minimise any performance impacts if they are a concern for you. They are generally much less hassle to acquire and use occasionally, than reinstalling Windows XP.

Cheers,

Bill

dsvochak · #6 Post by **dsvochak** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 8:39 am

bill bolton--nice answer.

I can't remember the last time I reformatted and reinstalled and I don't have any performance issues. Are Windows myths becoming as prevalent as urban myths?

#7 Post by **Kyocera** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 9:58 am

The index.dat files do exist, no myth about that, just google index.dat.

dsvochak · #8 Post by **dsvochak** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 10:23 am

I don't deny the existence of index.dat files and other "junk" that can accumulate. The myth I meant is "Windows creates many files that over a relatvely short time significantly degrade the system's performance...and the only way to deal with it is to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows and everything else."

As bill bolton pointed out, there are Windows "general housekeeping" tools, either available or built-in, to minimize or, as in my case, eliminate the need to reformat/reinstall to improve performance.

K0LO · #9 Post by **K0LO** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:15 am

I think that some of the descriptions of the Index.dat files that you find by googling are themselves urban myths.

I'm no expert, but each of these files appears to be a database structure. I can find several on my PC. There's one for Temporary Internet Files (cache), and one for cookies, and one for the Outlook Express mail store. If there is more than one user account on your machine there will be a set of these for each user.

There's nothing nefarious about these databases. IE uses one to store temporary internet files, indexed for quick lookup. OE uses one for the mail store, also a database structure.

Another urban myth seems to be that you can clear the IE cache and the file does not shrink. I don't find that to be the case. If I have a cache size set to 50 MB and let it fill up, then the index.dat file grows to 50 MB. If I then clear the cache the index.dat file shrinks to 32 kB.

You can clear your mail store in OE and its index.dat file will shrink too.

Nothing strange about any of this and these databases don't grow over time unless you have the IE cache set ridiculously large (like 1 GB), have thousands of cookies, and keep 10,000 email messages on your PC. A little common sense can keep these under control.

#10 Post by **jdhurst** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:36 am

I largely agree with you. I use CacheSentry to do all this automatically and silently (set and forget). My cache is 20 Mb, and the index.dat file is only 1.6 Mb. The default cache in IE from Microsoft of 1.2 Gb is way too large.

With respect to mail, I have about 25,000 emails dating back to 1996 in Outlook. That affects sorting and locating in Outlook, but otherwise does not affect my machine. ... JD Hurst

#11 Post by **Kyocera** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:46 am

I have viewed the index.dat files on all my computers since 98 and they are not urban myths, they do log a lot information, they probably are not anything to worry about unless you are a criminal using your computer for less than legal reason.

Personally i don't need a log of every web site i have ever visited. I think the op was trying to find out if there were such files, it was pointed out that they do exist, it is up to the op to determine what he does or does not want to learn about these files. My suggestion to anyone who doubts these files exist or what is on them to learn about them first, and form your own opinion.

K0LO · #12 Post by **K0LO** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:26 pm

Bravo. I completely agree about forming your own opinions.

I don't want to drag this out forever, but my comment was that some of the descriptions of the index.dat files are the urban myths; not the index.dat files themselves.

My main point is that there's a lot of misinformation out there. Reading some of the things people say about these databases, you tend to come to the conclusion that there's a big consipiracy and Microsoft is hiding tons of personal information in these files and that you have no control over how much information is kept. Not true.

Take for example the common statement that Windows keeps a log of every web site ever visited. This is the index.dat file for the IE History. Firefox has a history file too, and Konqueror, and every other browser that I've ever used. The history file does not keep a log of every web site visited unless you have set it to keep a very long history. I have mine set to 7 days. Anything before then has been long ago deleted.

The total space occupied by all of the index.dat files on my laptop is 0.37 MB after 1 year of use, so there sure isn't very much info in there.

#13 Post by **Kyocera** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:35 pm

How do you set your index.dat files to log only 7 days? Do you have a third party software for this?

K0LO · #14 Post by **K0LO** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:52 pm

I was referring to IE History (and Firefox History).

IE6 --> Tools > Internet Options > General > Days to keep pages in history

IE7 --> Tools > Internet Options > General > Browsing History > Days to keep pages in history

Firefox --> Tools > Options > Privacy > History

Fozzie · #15 Post by **Fozzie** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 6:45 am

I find that if you keep up your general housekeeping there is no noticable performance loss in XP.

IMHO most performance loss is caused by installation of various bits of usually unecessary software that insist on loading themselves on startup, stick around in the sys tray etc etc. Even once uninstalled, these apps tend to clog up your registry slowing things down even after they are gone.

davidspalding · #16 Post by **davidspalding** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 12:14 pm

Replying to OP: I'm highly suspicious of any "Windows expert" who promulgates the idea that you need to reformat and reinstall once or twice a year. I've done that after 5 years on a NT4-upgraded-to-2000 system, and got a minor boost, but that was also because I changed my partitioning scheme to minimize fragmentation on the system drive. I find I get more cleanliness from Windows by putting user profiles (\Documents and Settings\) on a separate partition from C:\. Works great for me, YMMV.

For the most part, Windows may grow as you install more apps, and use it over the long term, but the operating system is designed to be relatively self-maintaining. The idea that it needs emergency care after a few months regular use is preposterous.

I just did a search on my system and lo & behold gee what a surprise, these INDEX.DAT files are small and few in number. Securing from Red Alert. [edit]And YES, I use IE 6 and Firefox 1.5.0.6 evenly on my system.

For general users, the Disk Cleanup (CLEANMGR) and Defrag (DFRG.MSC) tools are more than sufficient. A neat trick for CLEANMGR is to run it from the Start -> Run command as "cleanmgr /sageset:1" and select the options you want disk cleanup to run by default (sageset). Note the choices ... lots of "temp file" cleanup, eh? After making your choices and clicking OK, run "cleanmgr /sagerun:1" and it will tidy up all the drives according to those settings (sageset).

After that, you can defrag. If you don't want to use the GUI (DFRG.MSC), you can run "defrag [drive letter, e.g. c:] -f" in a CMD window. If you're really anal retentive about fragmentation, run SysInternals' (sysinternals.com) CONTIG utility on certain file types. I have a batch file which does all these things, and runs automagically monthly after an (also automated) full backup has been performed. Fragmentation and OS cruft are both minimized without having to wipe the system or enlist the aid of voodoo MCSEs.

BikerMike · #17 Post by **BikerMike** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 7:40 pm

The best way to keep index.dat files under control is to NOT use Internet Explorer. Need another reason to switch to Firefox? This just posted to Slashdot today -
...Last week, Windows columnist Paul Thurrott ripped into Microsoft for ignoring CSS standards with its upcoming Internet Explorer 7.0. "Microsoft has set back Web development by an immeasurable amount of time. My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators."

#18 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 8:30 pm

Sigh! what a remarkably helpful writer. The sky is falling yet again.
... JDH

BikerMike · #19 Post by **BikerMike** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:55 pm

Helpful? I think the evidence is in favor of this. You could scan the customer reviews of his books on Amazon and reach that conclusion. He's certainly no Windows-basher, and he has been published more than once by Microsoft Press. It's to his credit, I think, that when his opinions are proved wrong he is quick to admit it and change them - publicly. Although there is nothing restrained about his prose style (the word purple comes to mind) he is certainly well informed and not at all shy about sharing his knowledge.
But getting back to the subject of this thread (although Windows "experts" are certainly a sub-subject

) you can deal with index.dat files at least two ways; by keeping them under control as has been suggested (use CacheSentry) or you can stop feeding them (Firefox).

K0LO · #20 Post by **K0LO** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:34 pm

BikerMike:

you can deal with index.dat files at least two ways; by keeping them under control as has been suggested (use CacheSentry) or you can stop feeding them (Firefox).

Firefox is no different in this respect. It needs to keep cached pages, a history file, bookmarks, search terms, forms data, etc. Look in your Firefox profile folder and you'll find compreg.dat, formhistory.dat, history.dat, and xpti.dat. Also check out the cache folder. These are exactly analagous to the IE index.dat files.

Geesh.

BikerMike · #21 Post by **BikerMike** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:13 pm

You are absolutely correct.

Firefox keeps analogous .dat files, and like the IE files, they are hidden unless you select Show Hidden Files in Explorer Folder Options.
They cause me little concern in terms of performance - I have set Firefox to delete their contents whenever I exit Firefox. For those who find this drastic (though I have never suffered from choosing this option myself) there is a one-click remove option in the tools menu (or alternatively, Alt-P or Cntl-Shift-Del).
Out of curiosity, does IE offer a similar function? I know (now, having tried it) that you can remove temporary files and cookies using buttons in the Tools, Privacy Options dialog, and even reduce the cache size (down to 1MB); but can you set IE to remove them upon exit? And how does CacheSentry supplement these options?

#22 Post by **bill bolton** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:17 pm

BikerMike wrote:Although there is nothing restrained about his prose style (the word purple comes to mind) he is certainly well informed and not at all shy about sharing his knowledge.

Paul Thurrott’s WGA Woes Solved
Sunday, July 30th, 2006

David Horn writes “Last week Slashdot ran an article regarding the trouble Paul Thurrott had with WGA. It turns out that after talking to Microsoft, he was actually running a pirated version of Windows, legitimately purchased from an online vendor. Paul admits that ‘the truth is, I just made a mistake. If we learn something from that mistake, fantastic, but I wasn’t trying to set up a life lesson for anyone, let alone myself.’” http://www.theblogverse.com/2006/07/30/ ... es-solved/

There's nothing much more worth saying about Mr Shameless Self Promotion!

Cheers,

Bill

BikerMike · #23 Post by **BikerMike** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 12:07 am

?
I must be missing your point. Are you criticizing him for admitting an error? Or are you blaming him for being slashdotted in the first place? Surely it's to his credit that he owned up to a mistake. And he's hardly to blame for being slashdotted - when a prominent pro-Windows writer gets stung by WGA that's news (to the slashdot crowd at least; I'm sure it caused hardly a ripple elsewhere).
And is this really on topic?

#24 Post by **jdhurst** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:10 am

BikerMike wrote:<snip>
Out of curiosity, does IE offer a similar function? I know (now, having tried it) that you can remove temporary files and cookies using buttons in the Tools, Privacy Options dialog, and even reduce the cache size (down to 1MB); but can you set IE to remove them upon exit? And how does CacheSentry supplement these options?

What CacheSentry does is delete older temporary files in order to keep the cache at the size you pick. It does this dynamically. There is a setting (in TweakUI at least) to clear IE document history on exit. I don't mind some cache - The original poin of this thread was that too much cache slows down the computer and that there is a way to manage this. ... JD Hurst

K0LO · #25 Post by **K0LO** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 8:48 am

BikerMike:

Yes, you can set IE to clear the cache upon exit:
Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > Empty Temporary Internet Files Folder when Browser is Closed

davidspalding · #26 Post by **davidspalding** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 9:14 am

jdhurst wrote:... The original point of this thread was that too much cache slows down the computer and that there is a way to manage this. ... JD Hurst

By reinstalling (the hearsay report present for discussion). And I assert that this is wrong. You can limit the cache in Options. You can set the size of the cache in Options. Likewise, Browsing History. You can set to clear it all on browser close, in Options. And ... you can clear all kinds of temporary files with CLEANMGR.

The Windows "experts" who claim that this is broken and requires disk reformatting are throwing the baby out with the bath water, if not flooding the entire house to clean the floor.

davidspalding · #27 Post by **davidspalding** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 9:22 am

JEBB wrote:I was at a computer club meeting yesterday and there was one discussion about how Windows creates many files that over a relatvely short time significantly degrade the system's performance....

Actually, we've been presuming he meant the IE cache. He could be referring to various temp files [cleaned by CLEANMGR] or the Content Indexing Service catalogs [also cleaned by CLEANMGR].

Without more specific info, we're reenacting the "The Blindmen and the Elephant" fable.

mas98110 · #28 Post by **mas98110** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 12:54 am

Hi,
Because I love & use my 240X daily for work I am limited to 256RAM
(Hacked the motherboard). For my use I loaded WinPatrol and it really helped the start-up time for my 4 computers! Best it's free! Mike.

http://www.winpatrol.com/winpatrol.html

davidspalding · #29 Post by **davidspalding** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 9:05 am

Preventing/removing spyware/adware/malware from a system only speeds it up if you're trawling regularly through the malware oceans of the Internet, picking up barnacles and seaweed clots.

Still, thanks for the recommendation.

BikerMike · #30 Post by **BikerMike** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 11:56 pm

Preventing/removing spyware/adware/malware from a system only speeds it up if you're trawling regularly through the malware oceans of the Internet, picking up barnacles and seaweed clots.

I do a lot of that!

Is there anyone on this forum who doesn't???

Is this problem with Windows XP real?

Is this problem with Windows XP real?

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Re: Is this problem with Windows XP real?

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