As a WARNING to others, and for documentation purposes, this is my experience. I have been using Eraser v 5.82 for some time on Windows XP professional. It behaves very erratically especially when erasing the recycle bin, especially when it has tens of gigs of data in it. Whether I launch it from the Eraser Explorer ineterface or via the context menu in Windows Explorer (Powerdesk Explorer, actually, but it shouldn't matter), I get the following results. The erase operation just stops before the job is finished. Clicking the STOP button on the eraser launcher pop-up just hangs the launcher. Often it is impossible to kill the launcher (eraserl.exe) with the task manager when this happens. And at times when it can be killed, the job being incomplete, most available disk space is gone according to Windows Explorer. This space is presumably being tied up with the eraser process. Sometimes I can start the cycle all over again and eventually the disk space is recovered after multiple cycles and lots of time. I have had the experience that most disk space is gone but the recycle bin shows up as empty. TreeSize Professional shows that the space is occupied by the RECYCLER folder. Sometimes I can erase the contents of this folder and recover the space. Recently when this happened, I could not access the contents and had to reboot in order to do so. Even Unlocker could not free it. Shut down was painfully slow, presumably due to the low available disk space. Also recently, while going through this agonizing process, I got the dreaded blue screen. All this has led me to start looking for an eraser alternative, whether freeware or commercial software. I will try v 5.84 to see if the problem is gone but if not, I will have to look elsewhere. I don't know if others are having this problem but if I am, no doubt someone else is. BTW I use a simple one-pass pseudorandom erase method.
'Erase Recycle Bin' - serious problems with v 5.82
- Thread starter foobaz
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