Thread: Wipe a computer clean of my internet activity?

Originally Posted by dragonoverlord

How am i supposed to do that???? Im computer illeterate.

Pyrofan1 is lying. Formating repeatedly wont help; it only wipes the file allocation table (telling the OS where the files are) and boot sector (telling your computer how and what to load at startup). The files - and all your data - remains on your hard drive and are easily found by miscreants.

What you need is Darik's Boot And Nuke. Copy to floppy or CD, boot your computer with it in, and select a wipe strength (e.g. "DoD Short" should be ok).

Instead of keeping data on, it wipes it all off, repeatedly, replacing it with with all 0's, all 1's and with random bits, depending on the cycle. And not only that: it does this in a secure and untraceble way. It'll take a day or a day and a half. But that's reassuringly thorough, is it not?

Oh, and make sure you run chkdsk (Run -> "cmd" -> "chkdsk") beforehand to remove "bad sectors", as boot and nuke will fall over if it finds any.

Warning, though: "Nuke" is a suitable term for this program. This will leave your hard drive with nothing on. So you'll have to reinstall the OS if you're planning to sell, or just keep it empty if you're dumping it...