I appreciate the prompt response. First, 50 is not necessarily a better
number. It depends on a variety of factors, including the connection speed,
the CPU speed, the hard drive speed, the condition of the drive, the browsing
habits of the individual, and so on. On a fast computer and a slow
connection, you very definitely would not want to use 50.

I do have ZoneAlarm, but it's the latest version, and I rather doubt it's
the culprit, since I've turned off everything but the firewall and since I
can change other IE settings, including, e.g., the default home page, the
location of the temporary folder, and so on. If ZoneAlarm were blocking, it
should be blocking the default home page change, since that 's a common
spyware hijack.

I've tried this with my admin account on this machine, with ZoneAlarm
running, and have no problem, so I suspect it's a permissions issue of some
kind. Unfortunately, when I run IE as administrator, I believe it's showing
me the settings for that admin account, not for the original account, so that
doesn't help.

I guess I'll have to keep digging or just live with 50. Frustrating.

"Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM" wrote:

> "PaulBart" <PaulBart@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:94FD0782-34DB-4038-8550-A78FEECD6F65@microsoft.com...
> > I'm running IE7 on Windows Vista Home Premium, using a login account with
> > standard privileges. I'm trying to change the "Disk space to use" setting
> > to
> > 128 MB, using Tools -> Internet Options -> Browsing history Settings ->
> > Disk
> > space to use. The value there is set to 50, so I set it 128. I'm able to
> > set it, as far as I can tell, and when I check it again in that instance
> > of
> > the browser, it's still set to 128. When I open a new instance of the
> > browser, though, it's back to 50 again. No matter what I do, I cannot get
> > IE7 to accept a permanent change to that setting.
> >
> > Aside from one change, I believe this is pretty much a vanilla
> > installation
> > of IE7. I moved the location of the Temporary Internet Files folder to
> > C:\Temp\Temporary Internet Files. Otherwise, I think everything's
> > standard.
> >
> > Any ideas how I can get IE to stick with the disk space size I want it to
> > use? Alternatively, anyone know which registry key controls this? I'd be
> > happy to edit in the registry if it will solve the problem.
>
> 50 is a better number. Much higher starts slowing IE down. But:
>
> It might be a security program blocking the Registry change it needs to
> make. A few, but not all, of the programs now doing this are:
> Ad-aware's Ad-Watch
> IBM Access Connections
> McAfee VirusScan and/or Antispyware
> Norton AV
> Spyware Blaster
> Spybot> Tools> IE Tweaks
> Spybot- Teatimer
> Spysweeper
> Spyware Doctor
> Windows Defender
> Zone Alarm (free) 6.5 Reported to be fixed in later versions.
>
> In the case of Zone Alarm 6.5 or Norton 2007 it actually has to be
> uninstalled. Make sure the Windows Firewall is turned on until you
> reinstall Zone Alarm.
>
> Boot into Safe Mode with Networking and try the change.
>
> --
> Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM
> www.fjsmjs.com
> Do not reply with email
>