I’m going to be changing jobs and giving up this computer in the next month or so, and, although I haven’t been up to anything really incriminating, I’d like to get some advice about clearing out various types of internet files. What should I do so that the next person to use this machine is greeted with a more or less clean slate? (Just for your further information, it’s a networked machine running Windows 2000.)
Do people still reformat hard drives and reinstall Windows, or am I still hopelessly stuck in the quaint 90s?
Unless you reformat and reinstall the OS, stuff will always be left behind. Deleting doesn’t do anything - the files are still on your disk. I am pretty sure reformatting will make it impossible to recover anything but maybe some Real Computer Person can confirm that?
if privacy is an issue, i’d go with reformatting and reinstalling windows… this would however take you a while 'coz you’d have to install all the correct drivers, get the network running again, etc.
if privacy is not too much of an issue, you could get away with going to tools/internet options/ delete cookies, delete files, clear history… then go to content/autocomplete and delete forms, delete passwords. then tools/reset web settings.
then go to control panel/add-remove programs. uninstall whatever you think is junk or may not be required by the next person.
delete all directories that contain any of your personal data. if you’re paranoid or concerned, get one of those shredder softwares.
run a defrag… then a scandisk… and you’ve left it in good condition for the next guy.
Format and reinstall is the least stressful and most complete approach. Software does exist that may be able to recover something after a reformat, so you may as well format the disk four or five times. This isn’t difficult, since you can start the format and just walk away and do something else for ten minutes.
you’re kinda right about the deleting… deleted files can on ocassion be recovered with ease…
reformatting a drive will not guarantee that all data is destroyed… i have successfully unformatted a reformatted drive in the past, with a high recovery percentage…
the only way to be absolutely sure of destroying all previous data is to fill the hard disk with 0s all the way… there are a few utilities out there that can do that…
I think that xash’s recommendations are pretty much what I was looking for. I’m really only concerned about internet stuff. I haven’t saved much of anything personal on the hard drive and my work files aren’t sensitive. I doubt any of the computer folks would go looking anyway. I’m just thinking about what the next person to open IE would see. (They’d have a different network account, of course, and mine wouldn’t be accessible by most people.)
Try sdelete after you’ve deleted all the stuff you want to get rid of, and emptied the recycle bin. No reformat necessary. It might be overkill for you, but it’s easy to use.
Or just use the SEARCH (start:search) search for *.doc, *.txt etc then delete… pretty easy. Perhaps delete the cookie folder…I think since its already networked people already had access to it to get what they want. But why format a working machine?
At a minimum I would search for and clear the windos 2000 equivalent of your Favorites, Recent, and Temporary Internet Files folders. You should probably copy the contents of Favorites to a diskette first. Then I would make a copy of all contact information in Outlook or whatever you have been using and delete any personal stuff, Doctor’s info, etc. Do the same with any documents, letters, etc in your word processing directories. Then I would clear out my e-mail, being sure to examine any and all attachments. What might just be a spicey joke or pic to you may be obscene to someone else. Only the Odd Gods of the Galaxy know what someone would have thought of my Elvira, Mistress of the Dark screensaver. Ditto on any JPEGs, BMPs, MPEGs, AVIs, etc you may have accumulated. And don’t forget any screen savers and backgrounds you may have added during your tenure.
If you have any designated space on the network drive(s), do the same things there.
That’s all I can think of for now.
Congrats on having anotrher job to go to, BTW.
All the advice above is valuable. But since Windows generally, and I have no reason to believe that Win2K is all that much better, tends to degrade over time, if I were the one receiving your computer, the first thing I would do is reformat the hard drive and reinstall the OS.
Check with your local IS person. It is certainly possible that they have “ghosted” hard drive images, and really won’t care if you delete the Operating System and reformat the drive. Just ask them to ghost the image onto the machine.
And yes, it is not perfect, but sounds completely sufficient and simple for your needs.
I swear there were no other answers to the OP when I submitted mine.
I Swear! 
Norton can wipe the HDD for you, and so can a number of other utilities.
Use HistoryKill, if u r not reformatting. They have a 15 day trial version. Also, it takes care that no one can recover the deleted files by overwriting them or something…
But if you were on a Win 2k network, the administrator already has access to all your files.
Or you can also just get a new HD. That too, is rather easy.