Mr. Shurfine,

Well, actually, there is always a record of sites visited.  That's why you can't erase those index.dat files.  However, recovering URL site data from the index.dat file requires more than a passing knowledge of machine-language programming.  You might want to download Restoration and see if you can undelete some reference to the sites you visited.  It's available here:  http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlrestoration.html .  But don't get your hopes up.

 

The Temporary Internet Files folder is a virtual folder.   A shell extension viewer uses the index.dat and desktop.ini files to create what we see as files and folders.  If I remember correctly, History uses the same data source.

 

If you haven't deleted your cookies recently, you might want to look through those for a clue on the sites you visited. 

 

Tony