Privacy concerns about contents of HDD files
Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by gewg_
(3588 messages posted)
(was: File erase help)
|I've used several "clean up" programs. Eraser, UltraWipe,
| argon
|
Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) is another.
They all work on disk space used by files which have been "deleted".
|but I'm still finding things in the user.dat and "system.dat" files
|
Those are not "deleted"--and they are necessary to run Windoze.
|that I would like to get rid of
|
You have identified one of the major differences
between Unix-like operating systems and the Microsoft OS family.
Unix (and Linux and Mac OS X and BSD and Solaris and QNX and ...)
put data and settings in separate PLAIN-TEXT files (one per application).
These can be modified with an ordinary text editor.
Bill Gates, in his wisdom,
thought it would be a good idea to put EVERYTHING in ONE place.
(Actually, it's 2 files--the ones you identified.)
Together, those are know as "the Windows
Registry".
They are NOT plain text and require a proprietary tool (RegEdit) to modify.
In addition, by default, there are 5 backup copies of the Registry on your drive.
We can pause here so you can thank Mr. Gates.
To do what you desire would require you to nuke your Registry backups[1]
then edit (by hand) your remaining copy of (the active copy of) the Registry.
I should mention that on many people's systems,
the Registry grows to a gargantuan size over a couple of years.
Have fun editing that.
If you have been running a Registry Cleaner utility over time,
editing the Registry will be a slightly less colossal task.
Now consider your Swap File which can also contain sensitive data
and should be deleted on a regular basis. That file is *protected* under Windoze
so that you can't nuke it--not without starting up in Real DOS(tm).
We can pause again here for your continued thanks to Mr. Gates.
This site's Webmaster is David A. Karp. Here's a chapter from his Win98 book:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/win98annoy/chapter/ch06.html
Search for "swap".
(After nuking that file, Windoze will bitch when you start up,
but will then build you a new file.)
You haven't said specifically *why* you are so privacy-conscious, but
if it's because of multiple users on the system, Win98 is a pretty lousy OS choice.
Win9x's out-of-the-box security is non-existent (no individual user accounts).
(Again, a Unix-like OS is superior.)[2]
The System Policy Editor is a utility on your Windoze distribution CD.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site:annoyances.org+poledit+users+jmc
You can give passwords to each user and improve things a bit.
It is not a small task to learn to use PolEdit.
[1] If you are *properly* backed up,
you already have at least 1 recent copy of your Registry on *removable* media.
[2] ...and, if you're tired of giving your money to Micro$oft for lousy software,
Linux is FREE
(as are the BSD variants).
- Written in response to:
- File erase help (argon: Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 4:02 pm)
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 |  | Privacy concerns about contents of HDD files (gewg_: Sat, Aug 16, 2008, 7:33 pm) |
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