Where can I go on my computer to find what pages have been visited

I have a user on my computer who is visiting sites and deleting the history and I am unable to find anything to say where he has been visiting. I am unable to locate these files. Can somebody tell me where I may be able to locate these deleted files and or pictures that may have passed through my system.

 

Hi mate, what you are looking for is your temporary internet files. What these essentially are, is that when you visit a website, it will automatically save the content into this folder. This is why that same website will be faster to load the second time you re-visit, because it has been "temporarily stored". To find these files, you can either use the Search tool (for XP) and type "temporary internet files".

(Note: these are 'hidden files". Search terms will need to be more defined) and more than 1 search will be needed

Or you could use the following file paths:

C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files (yourself)

C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files (user's with accounts on the pc)

C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files (whole system)

There, these should help you to find all visited content.

 

You could add restriction to the user to stop deletion of the histopry there is many ways on how to do this on the internet such as this place:
http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/537/

 

If the user is savvy, he will have deleted all of the temp. internet files and the history...if, however, he's not so crafty, he may have left the index.dat files behind, which record everything, browserwise...

Index.dat files are hidden system files - as timmytiger69 noted, you'll have to 'unhide' hidden and system files in Windows Explorer in order to find them...as far as viewing them, you'll have to use a .dat viewer: Index.dat Suite is a good freebie...

 

Just out of curiosity, this user wouldn't happen to be you now would it?

 

A. if it's NOT your pc, then it's none of your business and you don't have the right to snoop.

B. if it IS your pc, then you can:

1. delete his signon & recreate a signon for him with NO admin privileges. if he whines, too bad. it's your pc. you can also set permissions (like where he's allowed to surf, changes he's NOT allowed, download prevention, etc.). how exactly to do this depends on your operating system & browser.

or

2. my security suite (AV/FW/anti-malware) allows me to set parental controls, also. set his for "child" and he won't go anywhere except nick or disney...if you have a security suite with this feature.

or

3. purchase a keylogger program to find out where he's going.

or

4. don't let him use your pc anymore.

 

Also check for the cookies that may be left behind.

 

You can also have a look at the DNS cache (if used)

AT a command prompt type: ipconfig /displaydns (the space is important!)


Q

 

Nirsoft has some EXCELLENT free history viewers, some virus apps flag 'em as infections due to their nature (they dig into browser histories like some viruses do), but they're clean. Here's the link:
http://www.nirsoft.net/web_browser_tools.html

 

To ~Q~ : When I type "ipconfig /displaydns" into Run, I get a small screen that looks like DOS that quickly pops up for a few seconds and disappears quickly. I can't see what on that screen. I am having similar problems and searching for an answer (http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=1565668#post1565668). I don't mean to hijack, but I would like more info about ipconfig. Thanks!

 

to Meekiecheese
Thread is a year old, but possible that ~Q~ might get to it.
Since he was a respondant earlier, it should jump on his subscription page as it did for me.
Don't believe it could or would be considered hijacking after all this time.

 

Type cmd in Run and in that window use the ipconfig command.

 

Thanks again sach2! I tried it and the screen came up and stayed, but the only thing in it was the path: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>
Above it is the XP copyright info.

When we bought this computer last year, we were so glad to HAVE a computer after all of the trouble we had with the old one (for months we had to use the public library computers ), we just jumped in and started using it and dealing with issues as they came up. Our system seems to be locked up tight security-wise, which is great, but I'm the administrator!! It won't let me into a lot of files, etc.

Is there a book that you could recommend that would have more info to help me get around my system and configure it for our purposes better? Thanks again, I really appreciate all of your help sach2! You're the BEST!

 

You want to open the cmd window and then at the prompt type in your command ipconfig /displaydns.

I can't recommend any books. If you can make sense out of the output of that ipconfig /displaydns then you are already way ahead of me in terms of tweaking settings.

 

I'm not sure if the DOS command is going to show you the info you are looking for, but if you want to see the info in a readable manner just type the same command followed by |more as in ipconfig /displaydns|more