Yes,  you are right in that it should work that way but we find that a heavy load of cookies and temp files can really bog you down.  I don't usually promote a product but we use a program called cCleaner.  It's fantastic!  Configure it to clear temps, cookies, history and other bog down items and within 20 seconds you're running clean again without having to shut anything down.  We run it several times a day.  It's a free download program and widely used around this neck of the woods without any glitches.  Worth a try because viewing registry docs can really slow you down.