I have been using the PC Magazine utility AutoWhat? 2 for some time to clean up my AutoComplete data in Internet Explorer. But I can't figure out how to delete individual URLs (not the entire history) from the Address Bar's drop-down box. I've tried highlighting the URL I want to delete and pressing the Delete key with no success. Is there a way I can use AutoWhat? 2 (or some other process) to delete individual URLs from the Address Bar without deleting all the URLs?
The URLs that appear when you start typing in Internet Explorer's Address Bar are drawn from two locationsyour browser History and a Registry key that records URLs you've typed directly into the Address Bar. You'll need to find and destroy the URL in both places. First, click on the History button on the toolbar to open the history bar at left. Click on the View menu and select By Site. If the unwanted URL is present, right-click on it and choose Delete.
If the URL wasn't in History, or if deleting it there does not prevent it from showing up in the Address Bar, you'll need to remove its reference in the Registry. Launch Regedit from the Start menu's Run dialog and navigate to the key named HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ TypedURLs. The values in the right-hand pane have names like url1, url2, url3, and so on. Scan the list to locate the one that contains the unwanted URL, take careful note of its name, and delete it.
Now you need to "patch" the list to eliminate the gap created by deleting that name. Find the value whose name includes the greatest number. Note that the values are sorted as if they were text, so url10 comes before url2. Change the name of that highest-numbered value to the name of the value you deleted. If you don't do this, IE will ignore the items after the deleted one.