[ILUG] [ot-ish] Another Reason Not To Use M$?

[John McCormac]

I know this is a Linux list but many people here would have access to
W9*/NT boxes. And the fact that IE is now available for Unixes is not
reassuring given the behaviour of IE on Windows described below.
Basically it is going to be posted in HackWatch later tonight as an
article.

I was backing up a HD (Windows 98/406 MB HD) that had apparently run out
of space. When I used xcopy32 with the /h/e/c/k/y switches to transfer
stuff, a whole rake of cached images, webpages and cookies appeared in
hidden directories all under "\windows\temporary internet
files\content.ie5\hiddendir".  

The "delete temporary internet files" had been used repeatedly to flush
the temporary internet files cache but
apparently the files were retained in the hidden directories. The hidden
directories have alphanumeric names. It was the best part of a year's
browsing.

The hidden directories are hidden from the MS-DOS prompt so if you go
into "\windows\temporary internet files\content.ie5" you will not see
anything. Explorer does show the directories however. The activity is
strange though in that it will apparently enter the directory but will
not show any files. To access the directories from MS-DOS, you have to
type cd "\windows\temporary internet files\content.ie5\hiddendir" and
then you can get to the files in the specified hidden directory.

Has anyone on this list noticed the gradual errosion of HD space for no
apparent reason? It could be a bug in IE4/IE5 (IE5 was a recent addition
to the box in question). I have not found anything about this on the M$
site yet but it was only a cursory search. It is possible to set the
size of the "temporary internet files" directory from the IE/Tools panel
however this was set to 12 MB and the program obviously ignored it. Even
ticking the remove pages stored offline box does not completely remove
the cache. 
 
It is rather suspect that flushing the temporary internet
files does not actually result in these files being deleted. Perhaps it
is a fscked up installation but I have found it on more than one box.
I'm not just paranoid - I just don't trust Chairman Bill. The hidden
directories took up some 120 MB. On the present multi-GB disks this
lossage would be so creeping that it would not be so noticable. However
on the smaller disks, it is
very noticible and can cripple a machine, especially if the swapfile is
on the same partition. Depending on how much browsing someone does, it
would take a while for the effects to become noticable however the fact
that W98/IE is keeping a hidden log of everything that a user looks at
is worrying. 

I have not checked this on a W95 box but I have had one confirmation
that the same problem occurred with IE5beta/W95. Could anyone with IE
installed on Linux check and see if the "delete temporary internet
files" button does indeed delete the temporary files rather than telling
the user that it has and leaving them there?

Regards...jmcc
-- 
********************************************
John McCormac            * Hack Watch News
jmcc at hackwatch.com       * 22 Viewmount, 
Voice:   +353-51-873640  * Waterford,
BBS&Fax: +353-51-850143  * Ireland
http://www.hackwatch.com/~kooltek
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