marmite

Two possibilities are ... 1) Do a free space wipe ... which means running ccleaner with the check-boxes mentioned above ticked. 2) If you're saying you can potentially recover them (presumably using recuva) ... then you can also select all of those files in recuva and do a secure delete (configured via recuva's Options). Obviously that only overwrites the files that you specifically select.

Look on the bright side ... at least there's no excuse for anyone having an out-of-date list

I thought the OP meant both Mine's nearly empty. I suspect it's a location that doesn't get regularly used. If it was I'd be worried ... it seems to be sort of a 'dummy profile copy'. But its existence would seem to make it a good place for hiding undesirables ... so I agree that it makes sense to clean it.

You can ... see 'Options' / 'Include'.

Nay worries At first I thought it odd that recuva offered secure deletion ... but of course as well as the files you could wipe with ccleaner, recuva additionally allows you to wipe "good" but deleted files that you wouldn't be able to access with ccleaner ... effectively a 'selective free space wipe'. But the actual algorithms used seem to be the same.

Agreed. Like any other tool, it has a time and a place. It's saved me a lot of bother before now.

No. Secure wiping algorithms like DOD specs use multiple passes with differing byte patterns - a prescribed sequence to give the best chance of masking the previously stored bytes. Three 1-pass wipes would use the same pattern. Unless of course the particular software uses a random pattern . Which presumably even then wouldn't be as effective as doing a single predefined DOD 3-pass in the first place. So ... to use the table analogy ... it's like wiping it once left to right, once up and down and once diagonally ... instead of doing three times left to right ? Recuva offers the same secure wiping patterns as CCleaner.

Note that you also need to tick which drives are to be have their free space wiped from the 'Options' / 'Settings' panel.

Poor thing ... it was probably exhausted and confused

Hmmm - I've never had a problem with Eraser removing shortcuts. Two points with reference to the original post: Personally, I would still choose to use a dedicated wiper (e.g. Eraser) from my context menu. I like tools that specialise. However, I also think having an optional context menu (right-click) erase for ccleaner is a very good idea. Most software that offers context menu functionality does so optionally ... I think that's almost invariably the best approach (no sense in alienating users like Alan_B who aren't interested in such functionality by forcing it upon them). And such a feature certainly fits in with the role of ccleaner.

And for all those (like me) disappointed by Avira's 'fail', here's a quote from the test report: "The two most noticeable failures on this list are Sophos and Avira, though they both only missed one malware sample. "Avira couldn't detect only one of several thousand infected files, therefore the detection rate was not 100, but 99,99997 percent," an Avira spokesperson told Ars. "The rule for a VB100 is to have 100 percent, so Avira didn't get the VB100 award this time. The problem was already fixed by the time the VB magazine was published. All Avira products are able to detect 100 percent of the files since then.""

Yes it is a command-line tool ... though that is explicitly mentioned in my post. So yes, if you try and run it from Windows you won't get far I can give instructions but I'm reluctant to do so because sdelete is also a file wiping tool - put the wrong parameters in and you start wiping your files and directories. I'd rather you only tried this if you are confident in your command-line skills. Edited to add (and straying off-topic) ... for anyone interested in some basic command-line stuff here's a couple of links to start with ... it's a skill that's always useful ... The Command Line in Windows and Using the Windows command line: basic DOS commands

And today's award for bravery goes to ... johhnyq there are various ways you coud hide it, or maybe change permissions on the exe ... depending on various factors like the OS and how clever the students are! Though if they are capable of doing damage with ccleaner I would have thought that would have be the least of your worries - what problems do you envisage by them having ccleaner access?

Good grief yes ... I'd never allow something like that to run all the time ... completely unnecessary ... and it would drive me nuts

Must admit I've never used that sort of software before ... always 'done it myself' ... still got 99% which wasn't bad for over 400 installed programs. Only four holes, the biggest of which were old QuickTime player and Flash versions. Nonetheless a hole is a hole! It's very thorough - I like a lot of the advanced settings that show the non-critical stuff. And of course it finds outdated software before you actually come to use it. I will definitely incorporate it in to my regular 'security watch'.

No; I think the hang is a ccleaner 'feature'. Most people report than the ccleaner claims to have completed the actual free-space wipe ... it then just hangs somewhere and doesn't return control to the user. I used another tool (see this post http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showto...st&p=149391) which wiped about 16Gb in half-an-hour (give or take ... I didn't note the time but I certainly wasn't hanging around all day). Also note that I was happy that the space was wiped securely. With regard To Alan's comment above I think he's right about defragging; I suspect that only 500Mb of free space would stop any defregger I've seen. However it shouldn't be a factor in the ability to wipe free space ... in fact it should be very quick!

Brilliant bit of software! Thanks ePost

If you want to go 'back up a notch' you can find other versions here ... http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/#

Seems like you're not alone anyway ... http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=24425 ... and they all seem to be related to the free space wipe. Have you tried running just a free space wipe ... nothing else? Not that it would be an acceptable solution ... but it would be interesting to see if there's a difference.

Hey MystiKaL - good news. Just FYI if it happens again, simply recovering the partition usually doesn't do any reformatting ... that's why it's the safest option. Imagine you've lost the key to your apartment. You know everything is in there, but you just can't get inside. Usually, deleting your partition is a bit like losing the key ... and partition recovery just finds the key again without affecting what's inside. If that makes sense!! But the main thing is you're sorted. Like you say if it's valuable stuff it's better to be safe than sorry and it's worth paying a few bucks

Wow, you must surely be Fleet Command's sister ... affinity for Sephiroth ... support for FC in your first post ... and the '^' must be a family trait

I'd also add to fireyone's comments that if you do want secure free space wiping, in my experience (as per an earlier post) sdelete will do this. And of course, as with any operation that you may be unsure of, you may feel it prudent to take a volume back-up first.

IMHO if the "only" thing that has happened is that the partition has been deleted and the space has not been reallocated then by far the easiest, quickest and safest option in the first instance should be, as Dennis has suggested, to attempt to recover the partition. Just a few bytes should do it Only if that failed would I go down the file recovery route. Interesting tips and tricks for doing so listed above though. If the OP has tried the Paragon software I'd be interested to see how they got on.

Ahhhh! Now I see where you're coming from . However, referring to my last post, I think that the statement that 'a file (metadata or otherwise) is part of free space' is an oxymoron. If your 'metadata' files were living in free space, how would the program that's telling you you have 168Mb be able to find them? So in terms of your reasoning ... Why? The displayed disk stats aren't dependent on the current user - "they are what they are". You may not be able to access the actual file structure ... but Windows sure can when it's adding up Have a look at 'Disk Management' (Right-click 'My Computer'/'Manage' ... then expand the 'Storage' node and select 'Disk Management'). That will give you your used disk space per volume. This should tally with the amount shown when you do right-click 'Properties' on the C:\ node in Windows Explorer. And that's it. Windows won't show you everything on the disk; as I said in an earlier post it lets you see what it wants to. Since we don't know where your 'metadata' lives, but assuming it is in there somewhere, then short of totting up the individual individual files on the volume it would be hard to prove that it's not included in that disk total. If you're still not convinced, cut out the middle-man; open up a dos window and do a 'dir' command. It should tally exactly. In short Alan I really wouldn't worry about it. Indeed you can. But there isn't a direct correlation between the profile size there and the disk space taken up by your entire profile. For example, your 'Local Settings' folder which you'll find in your profile disk space, isn't taken into account in the 'User Profiles' size figures. You may not yet be convinced, but I hope this helps

Hey no need to apologise ... the thread had gone off on a bit of a tangent long before that I was more reinforcing the idea the OP's concerns still hadn't properly been addressed and that my posts weren't an attempt to address that. But I think the OP has long since lost interest anyway When I use the term metadata in this context I'm talking about all of your afore-mentioned files. Generically, metadata is just 'data about other data'. What I said applies to all of those files. Any data that's in use by the OS is part of the file system somewhere. By definition, wiping free space should not ever affect any files that are 'in use' whether they be OS files or your data. Neither does free space wiping affect fragmentation. None of your system or data files should be lost or moved or fragmented by free space wiping. I'm still missing why you're concerned about the various files you mentioned before. Why do you think they will be treated any differently than other files? Please post back if you think I can help further.