Deleting index.dat in XP

There are tools to handle automating the deletion of index.dat files on XP such as Javacool's MRU Blaster (see this page), however, the key to doing it manually without any extra software is to log into a second user account...

On my XP system, I run from a primary user account called "whatever". I can not, from that account, delete any of its index.dat files. But, I created a second user account called "cleaner" and I log on to that every week or so... From there I can simply use Windows Explorer to navigate into the c:\Documents...\" folders under the "whatever" account, and see and delete all the index.dat files I want.

So, you can take a couple different approaches to handling this problem.