Internet History Fills in Only 8 Weeks

[Robert Aldwinckle]

Dear Robert,

Hello, and thanks for contributing to this thread.



The 8-week figure comes from simply opening up the History folder, either as
part of my IE browser, and also by clicking on Local Settings and History in
Windows Explorer. I presumed (and still believe) that what I see there is
really what's kept on the hard drive.

Actually all it is is a special formatting of the Visited: entries
in the main index.dat file.

Also, yes, I visit a lot of sites, but, again, I'd say that shouldn't force
History to be so limited, especially when there's so much free space on my
hard drive, and when I'd set the TIF folder size to be so big (now 1715MB).

Are you missing my point? The History "special folder" has an implementation
(such as the index.dat file, etc.) and hence may have some implementation limits.
Regardless of how much physical harddrive space you have, if the combination
of your preference for having too many days plus your current browsing behaviour
causes those implementation limits to be reached that could be the reason why
you wouldn't be able to see more (e.g., exceed the implementation limits.)

So, how to adjust that index.dat implementation size, if, in fact, that's
truly the culprit? (Understandably, I'm reluctant to tweak the registry
unless I/we/whoever truly knows the move is a safe, and productive/helpful,
one.)

I suspect that this is where you have to become a trailblazer
for the rest of us, do some experiments and report your results.

Obviously the current value of the CacheLimit variable isn't
tied directly to the size of the index.dat. Perhaps it is as simple
a thing as a maximum count. To test that idea use your cmd
window (positioned at the History.IE5 directory) and enter this:

find /c /i "Visited:" index.dat

If you see that command reporting something like 8192
I think that that would be a good indication that the CacheLimit
value would be constraining the number of History items
which you could keep. Then if you wanted to try to see more
I think it would be worthwhile to try increasing that value.

As an extreme example of what I am getting at and as a way
of testing this idea take your 210 days and divide that into 8192
then make sure that on average you don't add more than
39 items to your History each day. If you are hitting that
limit after 8 weeks (56 days) I guess the implied average
number of new visits per day (146) will be large enough
to discount the idea...


OTOH there is something definitely regular about the sizes
that we are seeing. For example you told Gary that yours
was "16,171,008 bytes" In hex that's F6C000.
As an exact multiple of 8192 it's 1974.
Currently mine is 1,228,800 bytes In hex that's 12C000.
As an exact multiple of 8192 it's 150.

A reasonable guess from those observations would be
that perhaps that CacheLimit value is just a transitory limit
which can be exceeded as needed and there is some other
implementation constraint which will account for your symptom.
I don't know.

I must also say, regrettably, I think I started to lose your train of
thought around when you were discussing History.IE5. I'd seen that folder
before "in my travels", but haven't checked it as part of diagnosing this
issue.



Thanks again.

Bram

Good luck

Robert
---

 

[Guest]

Dear Robert,

Thanks for responding.

OK, so, in the DOS prompt, I went to C:\Documents and
Settings\(myname)\Local Settings\History\History.IE5 and typed exactly what
you wrote only to get no noticeable response after hitting "return". If I
break (control-break), control is returned. Might there be a typo in what
appears below? Just wondering...

I don't think I really missed your point for, as you also showed, I did
address the implementation limit of index.dat later in my last post.

I also definitely visit more than 39 pages per day, maybe even more than
146. (It could be well into the hundreds, for all I know...)

I don't understand your point, though, about that 16M+ value being a
multiple of 8192. Wouldn't that be expected? Are you trying to say that,
maybe, Hex FFFFF or, differently, 8192*2000 is the maximum?

Did I cover everything?

Thanks again.

Bram

 

[Guest]

Dear Robert,

Check that...

It WAS running the "Find", and came up with 30612 as an answer. Please
clarify (again) what that means, and what I can do with that information.

Thanks again.

Bram

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

....

Dear Robert,

Check that...

It WAS running the "Find", and came up with 30612 as an answer. Please
clarify (again) what that means, and what I can do with that information.

The /c switch asked find to do a count of the number of found lines
containing the string "Visited:". (Actually because of the /i switch
it would also count all case insensitive matches of that word.
I used the /i switch through force of habit. It should be unnecessary
because there should be no other instances of visited terminated
by a colon when that find is done.)

Your result proves that you have many more potential History items
than the 8192 "limit" I was speculating about, so clearly that
CacheLimit variable is not related to a count of Visited: items.

However, does 30612 match your browsing behaviour?
E.g. it implies an average number of new site visits of 145 per day.
If that seems unreasonably high it could mean that the index.dat
file is corrupt, in which case anything might be possible.


No, I was surprised to find that the index.dat file is a multiple of 8192.
As I indicated I think it would lend support to the idea that CacheLimit
is just a sort of buffer size which gets increased as space in the index.dat
gets used up.


Except that now your observations seem to be showing that an
implementation limit, (assuming that that is the cause of your symptom
and assuming that the index.dat entries are all valid),
will be more to do with the presentation of the data than its collection.
I think that that's some progress but other than some tedious analysis
comparing what is actually being shown versus what could be shown
I have no idea where you could go from here.

Thanks again.

Bram

You're welcome. Good luck.


Robert
---

 

[Guest]

Dear Robert,

Thanks so much.

So, as I understand it now, some of what you're saying is...it seems as if
maybe the History really is being tracked (and, yes, I do surf a lot), but
that somehow its display is being inhibited for more than a certain number of
entries, is that where we are (or, maybe better, where I am)?

Thanks again for your time and your insights.

Bram