[Elizabeth O'Brien]

Can someone tell me how web searches are ending up in the internet web folders marked as cookies? And how to stop it. I can't view anything. As soon as I click on something instead of it opening up it downloads to the temporary internet folder.

Thank you!:rolleyes:

[LTheobald]

Let me just make sure I'm getting the right end of the stick here.

You're loading up your internet browser and typing something into a search engine and hitting go. But when you click on the URL to view the page, it just shows a download box, downloading the page to the temporary internet files folder and never opens the page?

This certainly sounds like an unusual one. I'm assuming you are using Internet Explorer. What version of Windows are you using?

Right, to start with, just try some of these steps. It might find something that causing the issue.

Clean out the temporary internet files

1. Load up IE.
2. On the Tools menu (Internet Explorer 5.0 and later), click Internet Options.
3. Under Temporary Internet Files, click Delete Files, and then click Yes or OK.
4. Click OK, and then click OK again.

Alternatively, CCleaner can do it for you.


Do a spyware scan
Something might be messing around with your browser.

1. Download and install Ad-Aware and Spybot: S&D. Links to both are in my signature.
2. Run both programs. They should both give you options to update their definitions. Do this but close the programs down when it wants to scan your computer (we'll do this in a minute).
3. Restart your computer
4. As the computer loads up (before you hit the Windows loading screen), hold F8.
5. You should be given a menu showing you a number of ways you can load Windows. Choose "Safe Mode".
6. Windows will now start with the minimum of things running (no internet, no fancy graphics etc.)
7. Load Ad-Aware & Spybot: S&D again and run the scan on each one (one after the other, not at the same time).
8. Fix any problems that are found.
9. Restart and let your PC load as normal

Try the internet again. Hopefully, this will sort the problem.

[fredg]

Hi, Elizabeth,
This is normal.
Here is a Microsoft link explaining it, and also has pictures of what to do:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/...learcache.mspx
The answer before mine explains the same thing, but the link above gives pictures to follow, if you need them.
Also, I second the use of Ccleaner. I use it, and it will do all the above, plus much more with just 2 clicks. It's free, and is a great little program.

[ScottGem]

Whether this is normal or not depends on an interpretation of your question. Your Temp Internet Files folder is also called your Internet cache. When you request a page through your browser, the page has to first be downloaded to your system before the browser can display it. That's what the Temp Internet Files folder is for. The downloaded page is stored there for a while in case you want to go back to that page. The page can then be loaded faster.

Cookies are a different item. Depending on the search engine you use, it may be storing searches as a cookie in case you want to run the search again. Again, the purpose of this is to speed the search the second time around.

But your question said "Instead of opening up". That indicates that something else is happening when you enter an address. And that's not normal. But its not entirely clear what is happening. So if you can explain further we may be able to help more.