mnooning's Journal: Windows Temporary Internet Files are not so temporary

Windows Temporary Internet Files are not so temporary On Windows XP Pro, I wanted to see why "Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files" was so big if it was really empty. I did Tools->Internet Options submenues to delete both cookies and temporary files. I then used the mouse with IE to click down to where I could see that C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files still had a size of 36MB. Yet clicking further down to Temporary Internet Files showed that there was nothing. My Windows command prompt shows only desktop.ini when I "attrib" in the said directory. I have cygwin (read: gnu unix on windows) and through the magic of cygwin I can see the directories and files in the supposedly empty directories. Apparently all them. They are still there. Windows only seems to SAY they have been deleted. What is going on here? I look and see a directory name in my cygwin box. In the windows command prompt box, I "cd cygwin_identified_name" and voila, I can do the cd. But "dir" in Windows showed nothing and shows nothing. In the cygwin box of course I can see voluminous files and directories. Again, what is going on here? Can it be true that temporary files and directories are really not deleted, even though Windows says they are? It looks like with cygwin, anyone can track where anyone else on the computer (or network) has been even though they wouldn't think I can. That's great if your are trying to catch crooks, but to me there is just something bothersome about it.

While explorer.exe is running you have

[Organized Konfusion]

mshtml loaded.... this means that the files in temp internet files are "in use" so when you delete them windows sets a flag to delete sometime in the mysterous future.

If you really want them to be gone, boot into recovery console...
attrib -s -h -r C:\path\to\tempinternetfiles\*
del *
that should do the trick.