I previously wrote about how to have your system automatically clear the pagefile before a reboot or shutdown. There’s a couple other steps I recommend you make on your system…
Automatically permanently delete (Nuke on Delete)- Normally Delete sends files to the Recycle Bin and a Shift+Delete will permanently delete them. With the registry tweak below the normal Delete will also behave as a permanent delete. ***Note: Delete does not mean a file is deleted. It only frees up the file record and clusters so they _could_ be overwritten.
- Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit
- On the left hand side select the “+” to navigate to the following.
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ BitBucket
- On the right look for NukeOnDelete
- Right click it and set the key value for NukeOnDelete to 1
Scheduled Task to Zero out unused disk space – As I mentioned above a deleted file only insures that there is a _chance_ the file will be overwritten. If you run the below command it will zero out all unused disk space which _should_ be good enough to prevent file content recovery. ***Note: The deleted file name will still be lying around until a new file happens to overwrite it.
>cipher /W:[directory_to_wipe]
Here’s my scheduled task: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c cipher /W:C:\
Scheduled Task to Delete Recent Items – Even if you permanently delete a file and or use Eraser there’s a copy of the filename in your Recent directory. I have the following scheduled task command which clears my Recent items once a day….
Task for Recent Items:
>C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c del “c:\documents and settings\[username]\recent\*.lnk”
Task for Recent Office Items:
>C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c del /Q “C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent\*.*”
Eraser - I highly recommend using this great freeware utility. One of many things it does is adds a new option in your content menu to permanently delete a file and zero out the contents all at the same time.
