For those who are interested in erasing their history of websites visited on the Internet for whatever reason, there is a fairly straightforward way to go about how to erase Internet history from Internet Explorer, or at least the basics of sites visited, cookies left behind and other items that are a normal part of operating within the Internet explorer environment.

For those who are interested in erasing their history of websites visited on the Internet for whatever reason, there is a fairly straightforward way to go about how to erase Internet history from Internet Explorer, or at least the basics of sites visited, cookies left behind and other items that are a normal part of operating within the Internet explorer environment.

To begin with, you will want to make sure that you are erasing your Internet visits, the cookies which other websites will have left on your computer and also any search history. You will also want to erase the recently opened documents history and the save and run histories that Internet Explorer will create whenever it is used.

Therefore, go up to the "Tools" menu and click on it. It is usually in the upper right-hand corner in Internet Explorer 7 and above. From there click on the "Options" tab and look for the "delete all" button in left-click it. If you want, you can go down each erasure button and eliminate any cookies, saved forms and password data histories and also temporary files. As the basics go, that's pretty much it.

However, you should understand that there will still be many places on your hard drive where the information will exist. For a more thorough and complete erasure, it is usually necessary to buy a commercial program that does a complete erasure. There are a couple of programs that are inexpensive and will go into the registry and erase those histories stored within it.

Those who wish to go a bit deeper into the erasure can call up an MS Explorer window and have it list all of the computer's index.dat files. Just right-click C:drive and then click Search. After that, click For Files and Folders and then enter in "index.dat" in the Filename field. After that, it will be a matter of using a commercial program to overwrite the history in that index.dat file.

The above thorough erasure should only be done by those who are comfortable in knowing how to go into the "index.dat" file history. Others should just stick to going into the "Tools" tab and then the "Options" tab and doing a general erasure. Always move very carefully through your registry if you plan on erasing it, and use a commercial hex file editor to do so.