Action Line: Software clears PC of personal info, files

Any of the firms listed under "Computer & computer equipment repair & service" in the Tulsa Yellow Pages can clean and erase your hard drive, remove pop-ups and spyware, etc., for $45 to $55.

Also, the May issue of Consumer Reports' "ShopSmart" magazine lists two websites that allow Windows users to "erase the footprints left behind on surfing the Web" free of charge: Eraser and CCleaner.

Eraser: Found at tulsaworld.com/Eraser , it is "an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns." Eraser is currently supported under Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Eraser is free software released under GNU General Public License. See tulsaworld.com/GNUGenPubLic

"Most people have data they would rather not share with others: passwords, personal information, classified documents, financial records, self-written poems, etc.," the website states. "Perhaps you have saved information on your computer for convenience but when the time comes to remove such data, things get a bit more complicated. Maintaining your privacy is not as simple as it might first have seemed."

Deleted files: You think that when you "delete" a file, the data is gone. Not true. When you delete a file, the operating system doesn't remove it from the disk; it removes only the reference of the file from the file system table. The file remains on the disk until another file is created over it, and even after that, it might be possible to recover data by studying the magnetic fields on the disk platter surface.

Before the file is overwritten, anyone can easily retrieve it with a disk maintenance or an undelete utility. There are several problems in secure file removal, mostly caused by the use of write cache, construction of the hard disk and the use of data encoding. These problems have been taken into consideration when Eraser was designed, and because of this intuitive design and a simple user interface, you can safely and easily erase private data from your hard drive. Eraser works with any Windows product.

CCleaner: Found at tulsaworld.com/CCleaner , it is the No.

WinUtilities Professional Edition 9.96-UST fullversion download ...

WinUtilities is an award winning collection of tools to optimize and speedup your system performance. This suite contains utilities to clean registry, temporary files on your disks, erase your application and internet browser history, cache and cookies. You can control startup programs that load automatically with windows, find duplicate files, fix broken shortcuts and uninstall unneeded software. other features include secure file deletion, recycle bin shredding, cleaning tasks scheduling and undelete deleted files. WinUtilities is a system tweaking suite that includes more than 20 tools to improve and tweak your PC’s performance. It offers an attractive and easy to use interface that organizes all tasks into categories and provides graphical statistics whenever possible. The tools include Junk File Cleaner, Registry Cleaner, Memory Optimizer, System Information, Registry Backup, File Encryption, Safe Uninstaller, Duplicate File Finder, File Shredder and much more.

WinUtilities also includes an Internet Tracks Eraser with Cookie Manager and Secure Deletion. Overall, a great bundle that offers a wide range of system tools with extra benefits which are not easy to find.

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