Help!!! IE 10 & 11 Shows Ghost Folders

Hi All :)

I am having a problem with Internet Explorer 10 and 11. Actually this problem even extends to IE 8 and IE 9... but the problem of ghost folders was completely fixable in IE 8 and IE 9 by running CCleaner and deleting index.dat.

Anyway the problem I am noticing is when I am on a website and I am using the website's uploading functionality to browse for a file that I want to upload... IE10 and IE11 will show ghost folders. For example, if I have a folder labeled as "Photos A" and I have renamed it to "Photos AX", IE Versions 8, 9, 10 and 11 will show both folders... "Photos A" and "Photos AX".... when in reality only the folder "Photos AX" actually exists.

As I mentioned above... when I encountered this ghost folder problem before in IE 8 and IE9, running CCleaner and deleting index.dat, completely cured the problem. However this doesn't work anymore with IE10 and IE11 because index.dat no longer exists.

IE 10 and IE 11 now use webcacheV01.dat... and so I have used the program LockHunter to delete the webcacheV01.dat at startup... but the ghost folder problem still persists.

So I have several questions:


1. Has anyone figured out a work around?

2. If I delete the update for IE11, will my system resort back to IE9 or IE 8? I am using windows 7 Home Premium.

Any assistance/advice any of you can provide would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Cricket

P.S. Firefox doesn't have this problem... no ghost folders at all. I don't have Google Chrome installed so I am not sure if it would show this ghost folder issue or not.

Hi Robert,

Hidden files and folders has nothing to do with this issue.

Cricket

Guys,

Let me repeat...

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with hidden file settings. When I am using the term "ghost", I am NOT referring to folders that are faded looking when you have your settings set to "View Hidden Files and Folders". I am referring to the problem of IE 8, 9, 10, and 11 seeing folders as existing... when they have already been renamed as something else.

As I said earlier...

"Anyway the problem I am noticing is when I am on a website and I am using the website's uploading functionality to browse for a file that I want to upload... IE10 and IE11 will show ghost folders. For example, if I have a folder labeled as "Photos A" and I have renamed it to "Photos AX", IE Versions 8, 9, 10 and 11 will show both folders... "Photos A" and "Photos AX".... when in reality only the folder "Photos AX" actually exists."

It actually shows 2 folders... none of them are faded looking or anything... when it really should show only 1. As I said earlier, this was a problem in IE 8 and 9 but it could be corrected by using CCleaner to remove index.dat. When index.dat is deleted... IE rebuilds this file and everything shows correctly.

IE 10 & 11 no longer use index.dat and the deletion of the webcacheV01.dat file or even the webcache folder does not correct the problem. I think I am going to have to go back to using IE 9, until I get an answer from someone knowledgeable about how to fix this issue.

It's too bad Microsnot had to screw things up by removing index.dat in IE 10 and 11.

Cricket

Hi Thrashzone,

This issue about the webcacheV01.dat file versus the index.dat file also is related to a similar thread on this forum. Some people used various cleaning tools to get rid of webcacheV01.dat and other files and found that their file settings were corrupted. See below:

https://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/311407-ie10-uses-webcachev01-dat-vs-index-dat-files-how-clear-delete.html

Anyway... I did some investigating tonight and I think I found a solution to the problem. I knew approximately when the ghost folder problem appeared in IE today and I noticed that when I looked in the directory below, I noticed several .dat files inside it that were modified today right around the time the ghost folders problem appeared.

C:\Users\User's Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

So what I did is I deleted the "Temporary Internet Files" folder listed above with LockHunter and rebooted my system.

This forced IE 11 to rebuild everything -- the "Temporary Internet Files" folder, the subfolders and the .dat files that exist inside it all..

I did this and Voila! the ghost folder problem is completely gone!!!

Even the special icon I used for the folder has re-appeared.

Anywho... What's weird about this whole issue... is the when I view this main folder (which btw, contains a lot of sub folders inside it) without IE (this main folder is located right on my desktop) everything is perfect... the special icon is there, the correct sub folders inside it are there.


It's only when using IE ... and going to various websites where I can upload files that I see the ghost folders.

When I hit click the "browse" button on these websites and look for files to upload (I am a photographer so I am always uploading .jpgs ), IE must use its own folder database which over time gets corrupted-- particularly if you move files around a lot or rename folders a lot (which is something I do quite frequently).

Cricket