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Dutch Duck Cache and History Reader Help

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Some items cannot be deleted.

It can happen that when you try to delete a link in History Explorer, the deletion does not work. It can also happen that you see that a file stays in your History well beyond its normal expiration period.

This is not the fault of History Explorer, but indicates that one of the files in your History has become corrupted. Your history files can become corrupted when you fail to properly shut down windows or when the power fails or by some system lockups. Upon corruption, some of the URLs are isolated and can't be properly referenced.

How to fix this

The only way you can fix this, is to manually remove your history file. Note that this will clear your entire History file. You can do this as follows.

As the first step, you need to clear your history in Internet Explorer itself (in Internet Explorer 6, go to tools, internet options, and press "Clear history").

The next step is to remove the history file. How to do this depends on what version of Windows you have.

Windows 98


  1. Make a boot disk.
    • Put a blank floppy in the A: drive.
    • Go to a dos-prompt.
    • Type cd c:\windows\command (Assuming the name of your windows directory is c:\windows).
    • Type bootdisk a:.
  2. Reboot your computer, with the floppy disk in it.
  3. Go to the c-drive, and type the following commands (Assuming the name of your windows directory is c:\windows).:
     
    ATTRIB -R -A -S -H C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY\*.* /S
    DELTREE /Y C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY
  4. Reboot your computer.

Windows ME


  1. Make a boot disk.
    • Go to control panel.
    • Go to add\remove programs.
    • Go to startup disk and create one.
  2. Reboot your computer, with the floppy disk in it.
  3. Go to the c-drive, and type the following commands (Assuming the name of your windows directory is c:\windows):
     
    ATTRIB -R -A -S -H C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY\*.* /S
    DELTREE /Y C:\WINDOWS\HISTORY
  4. Reboot your computer.

Windows XP or 2000

  1. Log out and log in as another user.(Make sure the other user has administrator privileges).
  2. If you first need to create another user account, goto Control Panel, User accounts, and then create a new user.
  3. If you are logged in as another user, type the following comments from a dos-prompt (assuming your user account name is jdoe)

    ATTRIB -R -A -S -H "C:\documents and settings\jdoe\local settings\history" /S
    rd /s "c:\documents and settings\jdoe\local settings\history"