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I need to be able to delete my entire browsing history in IE8. Even after explicitly invoking the option of clearing browsing history from within IE8, I notice some cookies and files do not get deleted from the Temporary Internet Files folder.

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Welcome to Stack Overflow. This site is for programming questions (see the FAQ stackoverflow.com/faq), not general computer questions. This question appears to be the latter. – derobert Apr 9 '09 at 14:48
FYI: type this into your address bar-> 'shell:cookies' without single quotes, it will show you the folder with the cookies that exist still – Ryan Feb 10 '11 at 18:56
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Aug 29 '10 at 23:34

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8 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

instead of going to tools -> internet options -> delete... it seems IE has a 'feature' to save data for your frequent websites, so deleting cookies does not always delete cookies.

If you instead go to Tools -> Delete Browsing History -> uncheck 'Preserve Favorites website data' -> then delete cookies, this removes all cookies like it should have in the first place

I don't know why IE8 thought having the Preserve Favorites checkmarked by default was a good idea, but whatever floats there boat! -Jaseowns

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I had this same issue, it's really lame how vague IE is about which sites it will preserve data for. It just decides for you? LOL! Thanks for posting this solution, worked for me. – Ryan Feb 10 '11 at 18:54
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up vote 0 down vote

it's possibly a bug in IE8, perhaps try clearing temporary internet files using Disk Cleanup

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up vote 0 down vote

Appears that this is also not working when the server tries to expire a cookie as well.

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up vote 0 down vote

I had the same issue just recently. I ended up manually going into the users profile, deleting the cookie files, and restarting the browser.

This worked of course, but it shouldn't be this difficult.

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I have had one cookie that would not delete. It was preventing log on at a secure site. Deleting the cookie itself did not help as the browser was detecting the link in the Temporary Internet Files folder. This does not hold the cookies themselves, only links to them. The link would not delete and caused the computer to "beep" when attempting.

Clean boot (all services off) did not work. The only solution was to export cookies to a temp file, delete all cookes then re import. This worked because deleting all cookies clears them from the link folder. I could then delete the newly created link for the offending cookie. Still no idea what was going on.

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Tools -> Delete Browsing History ->

^^ i can't find the second option! help. thanks =)

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up vote 0 down vote

He means Safty Not Tools !! You should uncheck 'Preserve Favorites website data' from Delete Browsing History

;)

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up vote 0 down vote

Go to tools and choose delete browsing history.

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