Robbie

Eraser by Heidi has this feature and is a perfect companion to CCleaner. It is also freeware: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ make sure you download the latest build, 5.82 as that is trouble free (5.81 was a problematic build). Personally, while I would welcome an all-in-one solution, I think that adding too many features to CCleaner would ruin its simplicity of use. Additionally, I think it may be hard to beat Eraser - it is very good at the job it does.

I was thinking that if you could do it, it would be wiped anyway by the time it got logged... Why would you want what has been removed to be logged? If it's work related (or kid related!) I'm sure you need to do it before the computer closes...

where do you read the file names from? Some file names ARE undeletable. This is because they reside in the MFT and are impossible to get rid of, unless you delete the MFT itself. I believe this happens if a file is under a certain size.

strange to see a police car parked outside the Ace Cafe in London in the first picture. As the Cafe is a well known haunt of bikers, it would have to be a fast police car to catch up with some of the bikes you get to see there!

I'd like to think I was protected if for any reason I messed up the operating system or whatever that I had to reinstall. Not just through doing backups on a regular basis but I also have Slax burned to a disk so that if the OS / hard drive can't be accessed I can boot into Linux via that disk, which just uses the computer's RAM http://www.slax.org/ in fact, when I've ran DBAN to wipe my hard drive I've often used the disk to access the internet to check emails etc before embarking on the fun that reinstalling is! Having this disk could also mean being able to access the CCleaner forums or some troubleshooting site if that was necessary to ask questions to see if a reinstall or resetting the computer back to factory settings could be avoided.

many people at the board have said that there should be no problems uninstalling the Hotfix Uninstallers. However, you should be aware that if you do so, if you ever needed to uninstall a hotfix after doing this you wouldn't be able to. As has been pointed out elsewhere, as these tend to be crucial updates it's not likely that you would need to ever uninstall the hotfix anyway. I haven't deleted the HFU's but as I have 60GB of free space left it's not really a pressing problem, even though I could free up about 500Mb of space. I suppose it depends on how much free space you have as much as anything else.

any one who feels adventurous, wants to block particular sites and who feels comfortable working with the hosts file can add an entry to there, eg adding 127.0.0.1 www.yahoo.com would block access to www.yahoo.com by having the computer try to resolve the IP address for www.yahoo.com to 127.0.0.1, which is the local machine (the computer itself). The site would just not load and would look like it was permanently down. but you would need to know every site that is to be blocked - probably pretty much of a non-starter if it's a teenage lad surfing the net. There are sites out there that provide lists of "adult" sites that can be blocked by this method, but of course if he knows how to circumvent the hosts blocking system, you'd be essentially giving him a great big list of porn sites, which somewhat defeats the object!

yes, I've noticed this before and have often wondered why the analysis finds more than is actually deleted.

I would turn off the autoclear feature as then you can be certain that the data is securely wiped by CCleaner.

As the old year gives way to the new... it's that time of year that I like to do a new install of my Windows XP. In fact I like to do one every 3 months or so (it helps with all them freebie programs that only give you so long to use them, I won't mention MS Office ). But as the beginning of the New Year approaches I wonder if it's worth doing it this time... the last time I reinstalled, back in September I had to download 34 updates and now the total is at 65, and that doesn't include IE7 or WMP11. I'd love to know how people can download all the updates to a disk and have them run easily. I tried doing it once before and I never could get it to work properly - only 7 actually worked and after all my hard work I still had to download the rest. What we need is an SP3, but that's not likely to happen in the near future, so to all those people who regularly reset their computer back to factory perfect - how do you get your XP updates? I always use DBAN to wipe the disk, then I use my (own) OEM compiled disk, which returns my computer to how it was last March. It does recreate the recovery partition etc but I love a clean install with a full disk wipe. Does anyone have any idea how I can then install a disk to update the computer without having to spend ages downloading update after update? Especially now that we have IE7, WMP11 and other new things. I've tried using disk imaging software in the past (eg Acronis) and that never works... All I ever have is all my programs (eg FF, Open Office) backed up to disk to save reinstalling the latest updates.

I've been running the AVG Free edition for years now, I have no problems with the program EXCEPT... since the new version of AVG was released a few weeks ago, doing a Scan Computer - Complete Test, now seems to take ages. I have the option ticked to check all files, not just infectable files. Under the previous releases, a scan would take about 20 to 25 minutes for me (I only ever have about 8GB of data on my computer, on an 71GB C: drive, I don't save music etc to the computer except to download to burn and then erase from the computer, the free space is usually about 88%). Now the scan is taking well over an hour, up to 1.5 hours! Has any one else had this problem or is it just me? It is AVG Program version 7.5.432. Apart from this, I have no other problems with the program. I used to do a scan twice week, now I have to set it running when I know I don't need to use the computer. I haven't changed any settings on my computer and have the same firewall etc. Any ideas or suggestions?

thanks for the answers! I made a slight error, my shared graphics is 64MB, not 92MB, the exclusive amount of RAM available to my computer is 192MB (256-64). I have had someone previously suggest getting a graphics card, rather than using the shared graphics set-up. But I don't use the computer for gaming, mainly just emails, newsgroups and the internet, plus some use of spreadsheets etc. I'm really looking for extra memory just to speed up the running of the computer as sometimes I have a few applications running at the same time. Thanks for the suggestion about crucial.com, it actually answered my query about whether I could mix a 512 stick with a 256 one! All I had to do was input details about the motherboard and it did the rest, including providing a "questions and answer" feature which basically answered what I needed to know.

Hi My computer is running with only 256MB RAM, of which 92MB is shared graphics. As you can guess, it's a bit sluggish. I'd like to add some extra RAM. I'm hearing different advice though - the max I can have is 1GB, but I was gonna add 512MB. I know that if I added RAM, that it has to go to the primary slot and the 256MB would move to the secondary (I on;y have 2 memory slots) - but someone said that both RAM's should be the same size? Is this true? Should I just buy another 256MB or could I get 512MB and place that in the primary slot and move my current 256MB to the secondary? Would this cause problems? Any advice would be welcome, thanks.

Ayush wrote: What about : ''CCleaner > 'Options' > 'Settings' > Secure deletion' Because, from reading the above, the index.dat files are only deleted (at startup) rather than being securely deleted as with other files. As CCleaner cannot get at them to securely wipe them (because they are locked) it can only mark them to be deleted at startup - and presumably when they are deleted (at the next startup) they aren't wiped, just merely deleted.

I'm a bit confused about this then - I thought the heart of the Temporary Internet Files (TIF) system was the index.dat file. That can only be deleted when unlocked by Windows and regardless of whether you wipe the rest of the TIF's contents, if you don't wipe the index.dat file the contents of the TIF's are just recreated, whether securely overwritten or otherwise. And the index.dat file is only deleted at startup, not securely wiped. I must admit I am unsure about this, I've read conflicting views.

I'm not sure if Temp Internet Files are wiped up to the 7 pass option maximum. CCleaner marks that folder for deletion at startup, but whether it then wipes the file and its contents more than once I'm not sure. I'm not even sure if it wipes them at all, instead it might just simply delete them, meaning they will be residing in free space and therefore recoverable.

I'm curious as to what it could be....

I meant to ask this and forgot: from where did you download the calendar that's on your desktop? It looks good.

thanks, I've just had a look, looks quite good!

yeah, that worked fine for me. I thought the My Documents etc folders looked bland. Now they all look quite snazzy! Thanks. Out of interest, had you read about this fix or did you come up with the solution yourself? In hindsight, I can see it follows the same pattern as for the main Luna theme (ie Luna -Shell-NormalColor-shellstyle.dll), but I would never have even began to think about creating folders etc. I just asumed it had a bland appearance for My Computer, My Documents etc. while we are on the subject of Themes, does anyone know of any safe websites where I could go to have a look at downloading some more themes? I did a google and found a few but I'm a bit wary of just downloading anything to my computer - I once read that downloading screensavers etc was a way in which viruses could be spread.

Hello, and welcome! In Cleaner Settings in CCleaner do you have the History option in Internet Explorer ticked? If this is ticked, the History in IE is cleared.

WMP11 looks hideous. That is simplicity. WMP11 is not!

DBAN is one option (DBAN means Darik's Boot and Nuke, Darik being the author). dban.sourceforge.net It is bundled with Eraser, but is also available as a standalone program from the above link. Version 1.0.7 is the latest release. It wipes the entire hard drive - literally everything. I use it about once every 6 months prior to doing a reformat and reinstall. However, and it is a BIG WARNING, it isn't to be messed with as once you start to run it it will wipe the partitions on the disk, as well as everything on those partitions. You need to ensure that you are able to boot and reinstall the Operating System. In other words, don't do use DBAN unless you are confident of what you are doing. And make sure you back up everything first!

I've just followed what you've done (the first time I've ever tried desktop shortcuts) and they load fine. Do you just left click and hold on the shortcut that you've already created (eg in bookmarks) in FF 2.0 and drag it to the desktop? If so, that's what I did and it worked fine.

Overwriting anything 35 times is overkill. Eraser is brilliant but there's no need to do anything that many times! A 4 pass PRNG will normally do, unless you are protecting state secrets! And if you are, it would be easier to get rid of the hard drive...