Augeas

Aren't cookies encrypted, and thus only decryptable by the relevant website/application?

I did think about advising this Ron, but is this any good when the OP has installed Windows on the drive? Can this option find more 'undeleted' files than are in the MFT?

Download Recuva and run a scan, some pics may still be recoverable. You can also run a deep scan, but this will take some time.

Does whatever search finds say shortcut in the file type column? If so just right click on the filenames and chose delete. If search says Recycle bin or C:\recycler.. in the Folder column then they are in the recycler, and the recycler should be emptied. If it says some other folder then they should be in that folder. If whatever search points to isn't actually there then post back here.

Does the CC Analysis stage report that it will clean the actual file where the prefetch stuff is, or should I say where you are looking? It's generally agreed that deleting prefetch entries is of no advantage and can reduce performance, so it's no great worry. But CC does clean mine if I ask it to. PS. Well, that's a turnup. I've just looked in my prefetch folder and it has about 30 entries. Yet analysing the prefetch in CC shows nothing to be removed. (I don't have this option ticked, as you might have guessed.) So yes, prefetch isn't being cleaned! PPS Some bright spark will probably remind us that this useless option was removed a few releases ago. PPPS It does say 'Old' prefetch data. It probably has to be over a certain age, like me. I'm too tired to look in the manuals. Where's the bright spark when you need him?

Assuming they appear in a CC registry scan... Right click on the list of entries and click Deselect all. Then select the entries you want to delete. Press Fix Selected Issues, say yes to Do you want to backup the registry, then say yes to the entries as they are presented to you. If you want to remove a registry entry that isn't in CC's list then I suggest you read up what Google provides under registry editing. It can be daunting.

I think that a little more info is required before saying no. What are you, and your disgruntled girlfriend, using to see the old pics? If you have already deleted them then I shouldn't think that any search facility in Vista would show them. If they are in the recycler then they can be restored, but not seen as anything except a file name. The file names from the recycler can however be found using Explorer search facility. If the files are in the recycler just empty the recycler. (If you want to overwrite those files in the recycler then post here first.) CC will delete, and overwrite if the relevant option is chosen, any temporary/log files etc on your pc. If your pic files have already been deleted then CC will not access them. If your pics are still live on disk, then move them into a new folder, add the folder to the Include section in CC, set CC to secure delete one overwrite, and run CC. The pics will have gone forever.

You can filter the scan on any aspect of the file or path name, so you could show only .dwg files for instance. Use the file/pathname box. A full search is still done so you can try various filters after scanning. You can use the filter to search the file list, albeit rather cumbersomely. You can also sort the scan in file state order, so that the good, bad and ugly can be ordered. This can be done on a filtered subset. That leaves time of deletion. I believe that this can only be done on securely deleted files, as it doesn't appear that deleting a file necessarily counts as modifying or accessing it. Whatever deletes the file would have to somehow update the modified/accessed flag, and that wouldn't happen for all delete methods.

'Which is to be expected because I overwrit them all.' So does this mean that after recovering the deleted files from the FAT32 to the C drive you ran Recuva to securely delete the files on the FAT32? That would put more fish in the kettle. (I feel like Hercule Poirot.) You might be moving towards backing up what is good on the FAT32 then reformatting and reloading. A backup never hurts, anyway.

Yikes. I have resurrected my spouse's Toshiba S3000-X4 laptop, and with a little tuning it is usable on XP Home SP3. Don't laugh, it has 128 mb memory. I've upped the Virtual storage to 1 gb, but it is still sluggish at times especially startup, where it takes around 5 mins. So, I think I'll have to lash out on some memory. So I've read all about it, and I'm confused. The laptop has 2 slots, and the max is stated as 2 x 256, which is better than what I have now. The slots are SDRAM SODIMM 144 pin PC 100. Now can or will any SODIMM 144 pin memory fit, or do I have to go for the very expensive Toshiba component? There are lots of memory around with this basic spec that look the same, but not with the Toshiba part number. Would 512's be a waste of time, why can't I fit say 1 gb chips? Is there an addressable limit in the old pc? As you can see I do not read memory manuals at night.

Did you recover those back to the FAT32 drive? If so this is bound to be unsuccessful. Either the deleted entries in the MFT will be overwritten by a new file name whilst Recuva is reading them, or the data that is being recovered will be overwritten by the recovered files. If you recovered elsewhere, fine. OK. How much space did you have on the FAT32 before you started the recovery? How much after the recovery, if you recovered to the same drive? As you may imagine I don't know the answer to your problem, I'm just trying to establish the train of events. If your FAT32 drive properties is showing 111 gb free and you can't copy a 2 gb file to it I would perhaps run a chkdisk to validate the state of the disk, then run some software to give an analysis of the disk, such as Defragger analysis stage. What does Recuva say if you run the scan again?

Click on Options (top r/h), Click Advanced, and tick Restore Folder Structure. Click on the General tab, change View Mode to Tree, click OK to close the Options box. Scan your drive, and expand the results to show the folder you want to restore. Right Click on the folder and click on Recover Highlighted. Choose where the recovered files will go (best to put them somewhere safe and then copy to their proper destination after all is well) and go ahead with the recovery.

What do you mean, after running Recuva? Did you just scan the drive, or recover any files? How many, and where to?

I think that by its nature the Include and Exclude options are relatively static, you wouldn't want to be changing the entries after one run, would you. So it's not really too onerous to enter 20 files names, especially if you drag and drop (probably in fewer clicks than writing the post - twenty click and drags and twenty Yeses!).

This will be faster and safer than trying to mod the registry, and will have the same effect.

Do you mean that you know the password but it is no longer accepted? There are many software kits for opening password spreadsheets, just Google, but most seem to want some money up front. Is the spreadsheet Excel or M/S Works or some other product? Do you have a backup on cd or some other media? You could try restoring that to some other folder and seeing if that can be opened. As for why CC should do this, or even if it was CC, I don't know. Did you run the Cleaner section, or the Registry section, or both? If Registry, restore the registry settings from the backup CC made before the changes were done. You did back up the registry, didn't you?

Was that on individual files or a clean sweep of all the unused space on the disk? I think it renames the deleted files (individual deletion), does it remove path/size info as well? Cheers.

I think that the answer is in the link you posted. If you use Sdelete to overwrite at the file level, then Recuva may be able to find copies of parts or all of the data that have been left after edit and other operations on the file, by running a deep scan. But in general, the answer is no.

I'm not quite sure what you're aiming for. Do you want CC to show a clean registry page (nothing to fix)? This can be done (I believe - I don't actually do this) by adding the registry entry to the Exclude section in CC, but you may think that this is fixing the symptom not the cause. I doubt whether CC will ever manage every possible software quirk that's thrown at it, there's just too much stuff around to do that.

I'm not sure about UAC, does this not restrict all users to non-admin status? The recycler is handled differently in Vista from XP. The files are renamed in a different manner, each deleted file being represented by a $I and $R file. I would have expected CC to have grasped that by now. What you see shown in the recyler is not what is held on disk, but filename and other data extracted from the $I files. I can only guess how CC securely deletes files in the recycler. I also guess that in the case of live files it overwrites the file according to the secure delete setting, renames it to ZZZ.ZZZ, and then deletes it. Can CC simply access the recycler directories and delete the files, as they are not deleted in the usual sense of the word, but just hidden from casual view? I would expect large files to take ages to overwrite seven times. That's a lot of writing. The time can be reduced to one seventh by just overwriting once, or to a negligible amount by chosing normal deletion. I would ask whether these files are that sensitive to require such measures. I don't know why a normal delete apparently clears the recycler and the files are found with the secure delete option. It would help to have a blow by blow account of the operation. Does the normal delete analyse say in the info window that the files are to be deleted? (I don't know if CC just lists the recycler or whether it lists each file.) Did the recycler show as empty after the normal delete? Did the info window show nothing to delete after the normal delete, and then show files in the recycler after you changed the options?

If you really like CC then you must have noticed that the Yahoo toolbar has been there as an option for yonks. Download the slim version and you don't even have to say no to the toolbar.

Depends what you mean by cleaned out. As you're posting this in a Recuva forum I assume you're familiar with Recuva, or at least know that it exists. Recuva will recover deleted files, whether via the recycler or not, if they haven't been overwritten by subsequently created new files. If the deletion method included overwriting then all you will get back will be zeroes or random data. Why not install Recuva and try it? It's fairly harmless.

1) Probably best described as overkill. It depends how much detritus you generate during the day. I run CC when there's about 50 mb to go, which I've found is around two or three days with my usage. If you spend all day on youtube you may have different requirements. 2) I haven't noticed this and I don't think that CC does anything to sys restore points, some users wish it would. 3) Not at all, or at least not directly. CC cleans temp files, so if there's anything malingering there it will go, but CC doesn't specifically look for mal/spyware.

You should be able to Run Analyse - get a list of stuff to be deleted Run Cleaner - get the warning message, say yes, get the same list of stuff now saying has been deleted Run Analyse - says zero bytes to be deleted That's if you have your browser, especially FireFox, closed, but as there will be an error message to this effect this should be obvious. There will be some files that are listed in Analyse that aren't actually deleted, such as index.dat files, as these are deleted at the next pc reboot time, but these won't show in the second Analyse if you haven't closed/opened CC in the meantime. Also a long list of cookies will remain if you don't close Firefox.

CC does not have an erase all option, it cleans temp files on the system disk only. You will have to just delete the data on the usb drive, or use a specific data wiper if you want the data overwritten. I suppose you could add the usb to the Include files option in CC, with a bit of fiddling.