Backing up a HD had some rather unexpected consequences. It was only a small 406 MB drive but Windows 98 had managed to fill it completely. Flushing the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser cache had been done continually to save space. It appeared to flush the cache but the hidden directories kept filling up. But the temporary internet files directory was empty.

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.

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 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.