Retrieving accidentally deleted IE history

[K__S]

Hi!

I have a question about viewing deleted IE history. (My OS is XP, with SP3, and my IE is #7.)

I have been doing a lot of research, and was paring down my IE history so that I would be able to easily access the pages I knew had been helpful, should I need to go back to them.

Under each day of the week, I was deleting each site one-by-one, as I decided if it was worth keeping for future reference or not. I usually started with the first site under the "day" (i.e., Mon, Tues, ...), and worked down. Under Wednesday, I was deleting the unnecessary sites, and instead of deleting the first one listed "under" Wednesday, I deleted "Wednesday" (thus my cursor was one-too-high, and instead of deleting a single site visited on Wed, I deleted the whole 'category' of Wed). All of the sites visited during that day (hundreds) vanished, of course.

I am hoping and praying that there is a way to get them back. I am heartsick, as I visited a lot of sites knowing that I could go back to them should I need to, so didn't take down the info that I was considering.

Is there a way to retrieve the history that was deleted?

I have done a little bit of research online regarding this, but have found nothing. I found a reference to searching my hard drive for "index.dat" files (making sure to view hidden files), but the results brought up only two files, one for a year ago, and one for 8/12, which would be too old. Might I be overlooking something? Shouldn't there be something recent/current?

I am unsure, though, what to "do" with the index.dat files, if I can locate something relevant. Might someone be able to educate me about how to effectively utilize them?

If I am missing some index.dat files, is there an (easy) undelete tool that can find any "missing" index.dat files? (which would then need a reader).

I have also seen reference to using .dat-reading software, but no one has mentioned a specific program. Is there an easy program (for a non-technical person!) that reads these files? If so, I can imagine that the index.dat files have a lot of information in them -- is there a program that shows the *date* that the sites were visited, so that I can narrow it down and zoom in on Wed's?

I also saw reference (many places!) to doing a system restore, and going back to prior to the deletion, and I did that, but the advice was wrong, as Wednesday was also missing when I went back to an older restore point.

I also went to c:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\History, but "Wednesday" was missing there, as well.

Might you be able to educate me about the above questions, and, perhaps more importantly than that, offer advice about other things I might be able to do?

Here are my questions in a nutshell:
- In general: is there a way to retrieve deleted IE history?
- Should I be able to find a more recent index.dat file? How might I do that? Might I need an undelete program? (And if I do, is there an [easy] one suggested for retrieving these files?)
- How do you deal with index.dat files once found? Is there an easy program for reading them? Does the program list the date associated with them, so that I can look for the specific date?
- Am I going down the wrong path?
- Are there better, easier, more appropriate ways for finding deleted IE history?
- Could you educate me about the things I don't even know to ask about? (I am not tech-literate, so baby-steps would be wonderful!)

I am just panicked about it, as there is no way to retrace my steps, or duplicate all of the work and research. As I mentioned, I took comfort in knowing that there was a record of where I had been, so that once I got further into the research, I could better decide what information I needed from each site, and go back.

Thank you, so very much! I just can't tell you what it means!

So very gratefully,

Karen

[kev1952]

Usually once the history is deleted it's gone - sorry!

Browser history is a bit of a two-edged sword. It can be useful to speedup loading of pages you have already viewed and to allow you to backtrack (your usage) pages you found interesting. *BUT* it also leaves a trail for any prying eyes to be able to see what you have been doing on the net which can be a little embarrassing for the more dubious websites. Once you delete the history file(s) they are supposed to stay deleted for your privacy.

Learn from this and use your Favorites to keep track of things. If you find a website you want to return to then add it to your Favorites - that way it's always there for you to use. Using the browser history to try and keep track of websites is not a good way to go.