Nice...
I suppose that getting out of safe mode is the equivalent of restarting the box.

Are there any native means within WIN to read the contents of the index.dat files?
I think that Corel Word Perfect merge may work as well.

I'll sniff some more.

I ran across this site, offering a "free" index.dat viewer, but read the EULA carefully.
It basically states that you agree to have your homepage of your browser changed,
or if you just click "I Agree", you'll end up complaining about your browser being hijacked. Ain't it sweet, all this freeware.

WARNING
http://www.exits.ro/index-dat-viewer.html
WARNING

download and execute at your own risk!!!

Sniff, sniff

Ok, 30 minutes later...
Here is IMHO a legit site with some cool freeware and it has a couple of simple
apps to view your index.dat files. I've d/l'd two zip files and scanned them, read the license agreements, and decided to take it easy and first install the utility that allows you to "only" read those .dat files. The other utilty allows you to delete them as well.
Interesting, to say the least...'cause there are some URL's I thought to be gone by now,
and no, not porn, LOL. However, some of you guys might be in for a surprise....
this is a cool app for all those snoopin' girlfriends with access to their boyfriends' box...
http://www.it-mate.co.uk/support/idsuite.asp
Index.dat QV , just a viewer...
Index.dat suite , a viewer and you can delete files...

Have fun browsing this site...and happy deleting.

Well, another edit...
I figured, what the heck, if I've gone this far, I might as well be a guinea pig.
I've uninstalled Index.dat QV , which had a rather benign GUI, and installed
Index.dat Suite version 2.5.5. This utility is much refined and features a "run once" setting in the registry that allows you to generate and run the batch file without having to run it manually. Just restart the box. It is important to note, that you have to go to "Settings" and check the files you want to delete. The GUI is a bit awkward at
first, but it took me 5 minutes and a couple of trips back to the website to sort it out.

Dang, all my index.dat files were squeaky clean. In retrospect, you can manually try to clean them by drilling into all the various folders (that's if you can find all of them) and drag and drop them into Spybot S&D, or use this neat utility. So, I've learned a bit more, which is quite satisfying. Well, I'm off to a defrag session now.