In the comments on an earlier post, a visitor named Dick asks: “How do I find the Temporary Internet Files folder?”
Good question.
Unless you go to great pains to move it, this subfolder is stored within a hidden section of your user profile. To find it in IE7 under Windows Vista, do the following:
1. On the Command Bar, click Tools.
2. Click Internet Options.
3. On the General tab of the Internet Options dialog box, under the Browsing History heading, click Settings.
4. In the Temporary Internet Files and History Settings dialog box, click View Files.
And there you are.
To save a shortcut to this location on the desktop, so you don’t have to spelunk through dialog boxes to get to it again, drag the folder icon from the address bar (just to the left of the address itself) and hold it over any empty space on the taskbar. Don’t release the mouse button yet. After a second or two, all open windows will minimize and you can drag the folder icon onto any empty space on the desktop. When you release the mouse button, Windows will offer to create a shortcut (link) on the desktop.
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
I found something surprising in Vista today when I was poking around in Disk Manager. I didn’t know you can now resize partitions in Vista without extra software. I was contemplating installing something else on my drive for a test drive. I found the article here that explains what’s going on… have you used it?
http://www.12noteweb.com/2007/02/28/disk-volume-shrink-extend-windows-vista/
TTFN
i was going to be crazy while trying to find it. Thank you so much
When you find the temporary files in Vista, is it safe to delete them?
Thanks,
Donna
After you delete the temporary Internet files where do they
go and how can i find them.
Cam, I am not sure I understand the question. When you delete the temporary Internet files, they’re deleted. You might find them in the Recycle Bin, but I don’t think they go there. The point of deleting them is to delete them!
Temporary Internet Files folder has a virtualized folder in it and leads to no Temporary Internet Files. I only see cookies in my Temporary Internet Files folder accessing via Internet Options, never see any Internet Files. How can this problem be resolved to see Internet Files again?
Can files in C:\Users\%USERS%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Virtualized\C\Users
Be deleted safely? Can it Eat Gigs from my hard drive since it copies just about everything on my pc!??
Please help!
Does someone have an answer to vistaNoob’s question?
I have files there too, but I can’t figure out how to even GET to the virtualized folder.
I did a dir *.zip /s > tempstuff.txt in a dos prompt, and found a bunch of .zipped files of IBM’s RAD that i downloaded to install. but I can’t find the files in my Documents folder, I found them in this ‘virtualized’ folder.. but cant get to them any way that I have found!
I don’t get it, why does MS fight fire with gun powder??? Don’t they realise it only causes more problems!!!
BTW, if you still can’t see the folders then remember CMD is your friend:
If you want to get to these folders try this:
Start->Run->cmd
In the command box type this exactly:
cd %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\
Then type:
dir /a
You should see all the pesky folders listed.
Hey, does anyone have an answer to MNichael’s question? my temporary internet files folder never has any files in it! it’s fustrating because i need to access some files in that folder and it’s non-existent, and no i haven’t been deleting any.. and i have looked in there at different times just to check if it was deleting them before i could get to it.. [if that makes any sense..]
Everyone should know where the TempNetFiles folder is, it’s been in the same place since before windows98.
“C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files”
Unless you use a user login, then…
“C:\Users\% type your User Profile here %\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files”
Or where ever your OperatingSystem has it you can get to it through the…
ControlPanel, Network and Internet, Internet Options
Or Open InternetExplorer, then go to
Tools, Internet Options.
eg. here
http://www.f-prot.com/support/customer_service/38.html
But I have an actual problem,
Is anyone going to answer Michael and stupidstupidvistas Question?
“Temporary Internet Files folder has a virtualized folder in it and leads to no Temporary Internet Files. I only see cookies in my Temporary Internet Files folder accessing via Internet Options, never see any Internet Files. How can this problem be resolved to see Internet Files again?”.
I know they used to go there, because I used to go in and save the files and YouTube videos and things that you couldn’t get to through your browser. And delete the rest. Now I have to use page saving software, and I still have to download thing twice. Cos for about the past about 5months there has been nothing but cookies in there. And the files have to be going some where. I dont have it set up to delete them when ever I close the browser. So they must be somewhere. Vista has moved the folder to I dont know where
on the Microsoft website there is a free program, Process Monitor which you can set to monitor all file writes from internet explorer (iexplore.exe) and the exact path to the files it is writing to, ie:
C:\Users\%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5 and the actual files are contained in the folders within Content.IE5
Elf, you’re partially right but you have the environment variable wrong. %userprofile% should not be preceded by C:\Users. Also, you could use the environment variable %localappdata% to take you to the Local folder directly.
Meanwhile, you’ll have a very hard time manipulating those files in their actual physical location, which is a series of randomly named subfolders in the folder you identified. The shell folder takes you to a unified view of them.