Re: OT: password etc removal

On Apr 2, 9:50 am, Gerald Bonnstetter
<bonns...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Robert Baer wrote:
rebel wrote:
On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:30:56 -0800, Robert Baer
<robertb...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Robert Baer wrote:

 Have a friend with an E-Machine preinstalled WinME.
 Problem #1: name is presented and password requested; how to remove
PW and alter username at meinimum?
 BTW, do not know PW, i just click on "cancel" and i am in the system.
 Problem #2: MSN installed; how do i remove all instances of
username and password?
 Problem #3: OE installed; how do i remove all instances of username
and password?

 Icing on cake: Once all personal junk is "deleted" (even from the
"recycle bin"), is there a better way to remove the dregs than a
mere defrag?

I'm no expert on defraging, but at best that probably only makes it
harder to recover some files from the hard drive.

I remember an article in Dr Dobs on forensic file recovery and they said
they could recover some files even after the "format and install
Linux/Windows" procedure.

So the only way to truly clean up a disk is to overwrite the deleted files.

So something like Darik's Boot and Nuke is good if your reinstalling the
OS or loading a new OS.  I've used it but didn't check if it did work.
It was slow so I suspect it really did overwrite the partition with
multiple patterns.

For your friend who doesn't want to reload the PC OS, you'll have to get
a program to clear out the free space on the drive.  I Googled on
"delete files permanently" and found lots of stuff but they all seemed
to want money for their programs.

I would think there would be a free or PD version out there but I will
leave that to you to hunt for.  ;-)


Free, from a Linux live CD:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

Make sure the drive is mounted, you have write permissions, etc.

Cheers,

Michael
.

Relevant Pages

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