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Augeas

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Posts posted by Augeas

  1. It's probably best under Cleaner Discussion, I've always taken CC suggestions as suggestions for improvement in CC. But no big deal.

     

    I don't think it's something that CC does explicitly, I think that the change user or reboot is a clue. Try running CC without delete index.dat files ticked. Are you using the registry section as well or just the Cleaner section?

  2. I remember some time ago on University Challenge the question was What does URL stand for? The buzzer buzzed and the answer was - as I have always known it - Uniform Resource Locator. No, said JP, Universal etc. The poor answerer looked a little miffed.

     

    Anyway, Fournier, just when do the urls disappear? Five mins after running CC, ten, after a reboot? (And why is this in CC suggestions....?)

  3. There is an option in CC to Delete Index.dat files which should be ticked. As Windows is running when CC runs then CC cannot access the index.dat files currently in use, but flags them for deletion at the next pc reboot. Windows will promptly create replacement empty index.dat files. CC's secure deletion will not affect index.dat file deletion as it is the O/S doing the deletion. You can use Recuva to find, and securely wipe, deleted index.dat files.

     

    I'm afraid this has been discussed many times before...........

  4. Well, would you believe it, it started to work again this afternoon. I remember having the same problem on the initial install of this release Recuvca, and that righted itself. Very peculiar.

     

    I don't have a winapi file in the Recuva folder (but I have a winapp in CC's folder). Should I have one?

  5. I decided to clear pagefile.sys so I set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 1 and rebooted OK. However Recuva in standard scan now runs stage 1, with the number of files found increasing as normal, but ends immediately in stage 2 with No Files Found.

     

    In debug mode this appears in the log: WinAPI exception: FileDriveImpl.cpp(140) : The parameter is incorrect.

     

    I have reset the registry key back to 0 and rebooted and the same happens, no files found.

     

    I knew I should have kept my fingers out of the registry!

  6. We're probably all a bit mad (crazy) but not at all mad (angry). If you keep a fairly constant amount of data on your disk the filenames (which are held in the Master File Table) will eventually be overwritten as new files are created and go forever. If you've had a busy day then any files which are sent out to the more uncharted areas of the disk may live there for a long time. They're not really worth bothering too much about, unless they're called something like Paris_shows_all.jpg.

     

    PS Please everyone don't PM me, I don't have a copy of that jpg.......

  7. OK, all you Mozilla genuises...

     

    On a pc with Firefox 2.0 installed, plain install no additional add-ons, a few minutes after the dial-up connection is closed FF kicks off a dial-up box. I have caught the pc when it has connected itself, but that is very rare. Anyway, it is a real pain. I can stop this by clicking Work Offline in the Edit menu, but who remembers to do this every time? So is there a way to stop this annoying habit. I want software that doesn't think and act for itself.

     

    I don't know what is trying to dial up. If I go ahead it just connects and does nothing. It isn't a virus or spyware or anything, I have checked.

     

    Cheers.

  8. Wouldn't it be nice if you could.....

     

    Do a deep scan for a couple of hours or so, then when the results come back be able to save the results file, so you could open the file later without hammering the disk again.

     

    On both occasions I have run a deep scan I have held the down key er, down and looked at the preview box as it flashes by. You can usually pick out any strange photos. Both times Recuva has, after scanning several thousand files, gone in to not responding mode and had to be cancelled, which means that a great part of the long scan has been wasted.

     

    I know that saving a scan will not necessarily reflect what is on the disk when it's used again. But you could look at the scan results and if you see a dodgy file open it and check if it's still there, and then delete it.

     

    A deep scan is interesting. I found many deleted items I had no idea were still around, some I can't remember ever creating, and even all the standard M/S wallpapers have apparently been deleted at some time. Why is that, I wonder. Deep scan does show that we are more exposed than we thought. Even in deep scan I found some files still in the swapfile that couldn't be cleaned. Anyway, I'm rambling.

  9. I guess it entirely depends on how much is being deleted - and overwritte. I usually clean around 10 - 15 mb, and on the occasions when I use secure delete it takes 20 to 30 secs I should think.

     

    There should be a noticeable time difference between deletion and secure deletion, and your disk active light should flash continuously. After secure deletion run Recuva with the Show Deleted files option, sort in time order, and you should see a lot of ZZZ files and no files with the current time/date with under their own name.

     

    You only really need one pass with secure deletion.

  10. Does CCleaner acutally remove forever all items clean so that they never can be traced?

    Any file overwritten by CC using the secure delete option will remain on the disk but the contents will be zeroes (1 overwrite) or random data. The original content of the file cannot be recovered. The name will be changed to some variant of ZZZZZZ.ZZZZ.

     

    CC will delete the items you specify to be deleted, but this does not necessarily mean that all items will be cleaned. Some index.dat files are deleted and not overwritten due to the nature of the O/S, and I'm sure that there are many nooks and crannies where Windows keeps a trace of your activity. But, with the correct options, CC will clean your items so that they cannot be readily traced by the average pc user.

  11. I tried another run of deep scan today in debug mode, and Recuva ran through both stage 1 and 2 to completion without errors, so it seems that the error I reported previously probably lies on my side. On a 160 gb single partition disk with 9 gb used I found 149,000 files in just under 100 mins.

     

    Perhaps the initial error came from installing 1.13 and then going straight into deep scan. I have of course rebooted several times since then, so perhaps if I had rebooted after the install I would have not had any problem. Of course deep scan is not something you run every day (you do?), so a couple of runs is not really proof either way. But I'm happy to put this on hold, after all there aren't many, if any, other reports of errors, and I assume this great scan facility is being used.

     

    The deep scan is revealing. I'm surprised what it turned up, just scanning through those files with an unknown modified date. So perhaps we weren't so secure as we thought? Anyway, a tremendous step for Recuva.

  12. Everything in Recuva is geared toward recovery.

    Well, yes, it is primarily a recovery utility.

     

    It lists half a million files that are partially recoverable, totally lost, or fully recoverable.

    That's a huge amount (I usually manage about 12k). Did you run a deep scan to get this number, or the standard scan?

     

    Can I delete them?

    Yes and no. Well, really no, but as near as makes no difference. A file can never be deleted. A virgin disc will have (presumably) a uniform magnetic pattern on its read/write surfaces. Once data is written then that's it, the surface can never be restored to its previous unsullied condition. What CC, Recuva, and anything else can do is overwrite the data. This overwritten stuff can always be recovered, but will be of no use or importance to anyone. If you use Recuva to overwrite the data you will end up (if Recuva ever ends) with the same list of half a million files, but with nothing of value in them.

     

    There are diskwashers around that will erase the unused portions of a disk, by which I mean the areas not currently occupied by live files. In general they do exactly what Recuva does, but overwrite the entire not-live disk area with blocks of zeroes, or random data. They may also remove filename entries from the MFT, which Recuva doesn't do, so they will give an impression of having cleaned the disk but that is false, in fact the reverse, as they have contaminated the entire surface of the disk with their duff data.

     

    It's inevitable that data gets written to disks, so it's not really worth getting too worried about it. If we didn't have Recuva (or similar utilities, if there are any) then we wouldn't be able to see these lost souls. If you want to look clean, then a diskwasher may help. Rgds.

  13. If they're index.dat files - marked for deletion - then they will not be deleted by CC but will be deleted by the O/S when you reboot your pc. Windows will immediately recreate empty index.data files again, so you will always see these files marked for deletion whenever you run CC. Do you have any other files apart from these?

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