Registry

[SteveH]

Registry

I have been using Eraser but was told recently that it does not remove references/entries (or whatever they are) in the registry.
Is this true? If so ... is there a way to remove these registry items.
It seems to be rather pointless deleting files only to have the information available in another part of my computer (the registry).

Another question please:

Files are not truly deleted ... even after running Eraser. True/False?

I have been running a recommended program called Recuva and then overwriting all deleted files. I then run "Restoration", which lists all overwriten/deleted files, then giving the option to remove them completely. It appears to work.

I am computer illiterate (compared to most of you) so any advice is appreciated.

 

[DavidHB]

Registry
What you say is true, but not necessarily alarming. The Registry is contained in several files (often called 'hives'), which , for understandable reasons, cannot be deleted or erased from a running system. But the user data contained in those files is fragmentary, and typically consists of file references of one sort and another; only when sensitive file names are recorded in the Registry is there a real privacy issue. It is possible to delete these entries, and there are free tools available both to clean out references to deleted files and to compact the Registry so that the deletions cannot be recovered.

The Registry is less of a problem than, for example, the paging file and extra copies of data generated by journalling file systems such as NTFS; both of these are more likely to contain sensitive user data. You can set Windows to erase the page file on exit (though this slows the shut down process), and Eraser's free space erase catches the additional copies of deleted files.

Are files really erased?
Yes. What programs like Recuva do is reconstruct files from bits of the file system a simple file erase does not touch, which is why the time consuming business of wiping free space is a necessary part of the security routine. By the same token, expect utilities such as the disk defragmenter to leave abandoned data lying around. Wiping free space gets rid of such data. For a more detailed discussion of how Eraser can defeat the workings of Recuva, see this thread.

Hope this helps.

David