Odd files, can't find info on them...safe to delete or no?

Hello!

For the longest time I've had these strange files in this folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5

:

Folder name 8I2JAW86 contains this file: (and this is the ENTIRE file name)

reliablesource;dir=reliablesourcenode;dir=style;dir=columns;dir=
reliablesource;page=article;;kw=;ad=ss;ad=bb;ad=hp;pos=ad26;sz=300x250;
poe=yes;category=!intrusive;title=20;o<1>


(I had to add spaces to the name or else it would have trailed on forever)

I have 2 other folders with this same file in it (I am unable to copy the file name so I had to type it out manually and I dont' feel like doing that 3 more times :) )

I have googled both the file name AND the folder names and have gotten nothing. I've googled "reliablesource" and got nothing.

When I try to delete the actual file, nothing happens. No warning, no nothing.

When I try to delete the actual folders, I get a warning that these are system folders and can seriously screw up the order of the universe if I continue to even THINK about deleting these files (not in so many words, but you know what I'm talking about)

Is it okay to delete these folders/files? I would imagine they're some type of spyware/adware/virus but it's SO ODD that I can't find anything about them online.

Thanks so much!

hed

***on Edit***

I don't use IE anymore (switched to Mozilla). In addition to these strange files, these folders used to be filled with tons of temp. internet files, all of which I was able to delete without any problem. It's just these files I cannot delete.

Also also---is there a good list of junk files that can be deleted off a computer w/o any serious adverse effects? There's so much JUNK on my computer, and I try try try to cleanup every so often, but it's such a pain in the booty because I have to spend like 5 hours searching every single file to find out whether it's deletable or not :)

Thanks again
hed

sometimes when you can't delete something that will work. Right click on the filename, select rename and call it abc.txt or whatever.
Ignore the warning abt 'changing' extensions.

I had some IE.Content folders on my PC and I was able to delete them just now. They were however empty except for ini files.

Also, here is a link to a list of freeware programs which do disk clean-up. You can read thru the narratives and see what they do. Clean-up programs usually have a backup feature, so you probably don't need to be as concerned when you delete stuff. In general, I've found this site's ratings ('Our Rating') to be reliable:

http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/system/fwdiskclean.html

I'll check out the link you provided and I'm just gonna junk the files but keep them in the recycle bin for a few days. I have a feeling they're nothing more than spyware/adware/etc to begin with.

Thanks for your help!

oooh...spooky....

Okay. Enough with the ghost talk. Would it be possible to delete the "Content.IE5" folder that these files are in and then just make another Content.IE5 folder? I rarely rarely use IE anyways since we have Mozilla, but sometimes I have to use it if the page won't load through Mozilla.....

Thanks

On Edit: It won't even let me delete the Content.IE5 folder either. It keeps saying that the Reliablesource files that are in there can't be found...??? I guess I'm stuck with these files on the computer forever?????????? eeeee!!!!

I believe they relate to 'IE Content Advisor', which lets you rate/block specific sites as a parental control item. (The regular temp internet items go into their own folder, rather than a subfolder of the 'Temp' folder.) I don't think deleting them would be a problem, if you can figure out how!

You might want to double check that IE Content Advisor is off by checking "Control Panel| Internet Options| Content".
The first button should say 'enable'- if it does, just cancel the window because you don't want to enable that function. If it says 'disable' however, click on it and see if you can turn it off.

If that doesn't help, try starting up in the 'safe' mode and see if you can delete the folders that way.

you probably could delete the files without a problem but i would recommend letting IE handle the deletion ...

in IE, go to the "tools" menu and choose "Internet options" ...

in the popup window, you should see a button right near the center of the screen that says "Delete Files" ... click this button and then choose "OK" at the prompt ...

this should delete all "temporary internet files" ...

hope this helps ...

it's called CrapCleaner. I used it and cleaned up over 127MB of crap off my computer and a friend I sent it to cleaned up over "500MB" most of which are files that are no longer needed or left over from uninstalled programs. It also cleans alot of other garbage off your computer.
http://www.ccleaner.com/

I downloaded it last night and we got rid of over 500MB off the computer.

Super super helpful! Thanks so much!

You can safely delete the entire Content.IE5 folder (and History.IE5 if it's still there). Windows will recreate the folders at the next startup.

In fact, deleting those two is part of necessary IE hygiene. Both contain a file called index.dat, a lookup reference for the cached pages and URL history for the browser. The trouble is, neither of those files ever gets compacted by Windows. When you choose to dump the cache and history from within IE, the content of those folders are deleted, but the index.dat files are untouched. So they eventually bloat into multi-meg monsters and can slow browser performance (and suck up RAM). If you continue to use IE, you'll have to dump those by hand once in a while.

Windows probably won't let you delete those from within Windows Explorer (sorry for the uncertainty, it's been years since I regularly used IE and I'm relying on memory). You'll need to reboot into safe mode with Administrator priveleges and delete them using the command line. Then reboot, and the folders and new smaller copies of index.dat will be created.

CrapCleaner. It cleans index.dat files.

the files are locked but proggies such as Window Washer will clean them out.