cindylobb said:

Good afternoon –

I am going through and trying to selectively delete cookies on my laptop.  (Dell Inspiron 1520 running XP).  I'm scrolling down and selecting several at a time then deleting them.  I have come across a few cookies so far, that will not "delete".  4 of them all have the same name  ….  Cookies:Cindy@advertising …  then Cookies:Cindy@afy11 is another one.  Any ideas on how to get rid of these?  why won't they 'delete'?

 

Thank you.

 

Cindy Lobb

Westland, MI

 

PS… Foster, I hope you're doing well…

Cindy

They may be set as read only.  In explorer right click on the file and then properties near the bottom if read only is checked uncheck it and then try to delete it.

If that does not work you might try going to the command prompt (which is DOS) and try the delete command.  Here you may need to use the "/F" switch to delete read only files.

Post edited 10:30 pm – August 31, 2011 by Ben Carpenter

cindylobb said:

Thank you, Ben… I appreciate it!  

 

There are a whole slew of other "temporary files" that are not marked "cookie".  Can these be deleted?  Would any of these be files used by websites for password or other information like 'cookies' usually are?  There are ALOT of files here and i'm hoping that if I clear out most of these, it won't take over 6-7 hrs to run my anti-virus program or MalwareBytes!!

 

thanks again

 

Cindy

Cindy

The answer is yes and no.  Like cookies some are good and some are not so good.

The temporary files were more important back when a lot of us were on dial up.  A lot of websites store temporary file on your computer then when you went back to that web site it would load the temporary file from your computer which on dial up could be much faster.  I do not remember what happened with a web site that had changed in the meantime.  Most browsers have a setting to not use those temporary files and always load from the website.  I set mine that way because I frequent grain market information off and on during the day and I do not want the old file I want the most current information directly from the web site.

As for the cookies one of the uses of cookies is to greet you when you return to a website with your name.  The forums on this site always greets me with my name and my picture even when I have not yet logged in.  This is one of the good uses of cookies.  Another good use for cookies is when you return to a website that you have purchased from and they remember your name and address.  So be careful when you delete cookies or temporary files that you do not delete something that you may want later.  If you do delete something that you should not have deleted you may have to reenter some of you personal information to access the site in the way you want the next time you go there. 

I personally think that the cookies are more important than the temporary files so I would be more careful about deleting cookies.