PC Advice Needed

[wiseguy]

I've just purchased a new desktop and decided to give my old PC away to a local youth group. I have deleted all my emails in 'outlook express' and deleted all the files and folders in 'My documents' and 'My downloads' which sent them all to the 'recycle bin'. I then emptied the recycle bin itself. I am aware that this does not permanently delete them and that they can be retrieved.

My question is where do emails deleted from 'outlook express' and files deleted from the recycle bin go, that they can be retrieved and viewed, and more importantly how can I fully erase all remnants of these deleted items and prevent this from happening? Do I need any special software to do this and if so which would you recommend? And is it a relatively straight forward procedure to successfully carry out or am I likely to unknowingly delete a critcal computer running file by mistake?

Can any forumites out there help me out with any knowledge or understanding of this.

Any and all advice greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Guilbert]

I would suggest you reinstall windows and give them a PC with a fresh
install to get rid of all your personal data.

Windows keeps all sorts of files "under the covers" and if you are giving it
to a youth group there will problably be some PC whizz who will be able to
find out all sorts of information about you.

If you have not got a Windows CD to go with the PC then there are utilities
on the web to erase all the data on a disk (they write all over the disk a
number of times to completely remove data).

If you have not got a Windows CD then give them the PC with an empty
hard disk and let them buy Windows.

Read this if you do not believe me

For this test somebody bought 200 second hand hard disks.

Of the 3.3 million files found on these test drives, analysts at O&O were
able to reconstruct more than 40,000 Word Documents, about 15,000 Excel
Spreadsheets, and around 50 e-mail mailboxes containing their entire
message stashes still intact from previous users.

[Jacques]

I use PGP Desktop Professional 9.0 which has a main use of sending encrypted e-mail but it comes with a shredder which you can set to overwrite upto 28 times. Basically anything deleted through this is only recoverably by Police Forensics.

At 3 times overwrite it exceeds The specifications set out by the US Department of Justice for "sanitization"


Not free but you get a 30 day trial

[BGAFD Admin]

As Guilbert advises, it's wise to reformat and reinstall your operating system, as Windows is notorious for tucking away all sorts of 'incriminating' data where you might not think to look for it. However, reformatting alone will not secure a disk against information retrieval and using a disk cleaner is advisable. Sure Delete is free and will do the job.

If you decided that reformatting/reinstalling is a tad too paranoid, this software will scrub clean all the free areas of your disk (which, in fact, still harbour your deleted files) while leaving everything else intact.

[Cenobitez]

OutLook Express is something like

C:\Documents and Settings\YourLogonName\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{44D7A0EE-1499-474B-BE1D-1CB2A47B45FE}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

Just delete everything in there, Outlook will recreate all defaults again, but as everyone says reformat start again altho reformatting isnt the end

[wiseguy]

I hadn't thought of reinstalling Windows Guilbert, I'll have to see if I can find any Windows cds lurking around the house. I probably put them away in a 'safe' place somewhere. They may come in useful as a last resort.

It's scary what people inadvertantly leave on their systems. We had a case recently of a local Doctor who updated his practice PC and so he thought he would delete all the files on the old computer and sell it in the small ads, only for some computer 'whizz' as you say to buy it, take it home and set about retrieving the entire patient medical history files. Needless to say, he went straight to the local press to announce his findings publicly. Last thing I heard was that the doctors practice was inundated with complaints from his patients and ultimately he felt he had no alternative but to leave the surgery. Scary.

[wiseguy]

I'll have a look at those outlook express settings tonight Cenobitez thanks, but like you say reformatting isn't the end to it.

[wiseguy]

It's a little concerning Jacques that it overwrites and shreds items 28 times which even then our police can still recover, whilst over in the good old US Dept of Justice they don't even bother to rewrite over their files 3 times. Me thinks the US Dept of Just isn't quite as secure as it thinks...lol. Might be suitable for my needs though and worth a trial at least, I'll check it out, thanks for that.

[wiseguy]

Thanks BGAFD Admin I have not heard of that program, and the fact that it's free software makes it even more appealing seeing that I will only be needing to use it once before I hand the PC over. Its reassuring to know that it leaves everything else intact as well, because that was my main concern that I would delete a computer critical file by mistake.