why such a big failed-to-remove list? XP NTFS

[waveform]

Hi,
How come when Eraser 5.8 beta finishes, the failed report is very, very long?
I saved a text file that was 160Kb in size. There has to be over 1000 lines of things it did not remove in places such as Windows Pre-fetch and documents and settings folder and it even looks like some Registry paths.
I always restart my computer before running Eraser so it’s not a shearing violation issue. I'm just wiping free space so why should these deleted items not be removed?

XP-Pro
NTFS

 

[Carver]

I am on XP Home SP2, before a freespace wipe I Kill all non-critical process to keep the failed lost as short as possible. But it still windsup 2600 entrys. I am using Eraser 5.7. I used to save reports, but after a while you get to know which file is going to be on it.

I'm just wiping free space so why should these deleted items not be removed?

Because those files are in use by the computer, and are critical to the computers running.

 

[Robbie]

Hi,
How come when Eraser 5.8 beta finishes, the failed report is very, very long?
I saved a text file that was 160Kb in size. There has to be over 1000 lines of things it did not remove in places such as Windows Pre-fetch and documents and settings folder and it even looks like some Registry paths.
I always restart my computer before running Eraser so it’s not a shearing violation issue. I'm just wiping free space so why should these deleted items not be removed?

XP-Pro
NTFS

all the files that Eraser cannot touch for cluster tips area wiping are files locked by the computer, and which are used by the computer in order to operate.

You could do a run of Eraser, wiping the cluster tip areas only by running eraser in safe mode in the Administrator account: whilst some files will still be locked, a good % will no longer be locked as not everything loads in safe mode, plus running Eraser under the Administrator account will unlock all the files in your own Documents and Settings account. In safe mode, don't do a full free space wipe though, as it will take forever.