Thread: Wipe a computer clean of my internet activity?

Im getting rid of a computer and i need to clean it of my internet activity. Obviusly i deleted the browsing history but what else?

Like when i go to the URL and i type...www.D and then a drop down menu comes up and it gives the names of all the sites i have been to that start with the letter D like Dreamviews. How can i stop it from doing that? And when i go to youtube and i type in something like the number 2 a drop down menu comes up with lets say 2 girls 1 cup. How do i stop the computer from doing this?

format the harddrive, repeatedly.

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

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...

Um... when someone asks how to basically clear the browser cache and other private info, it's not very nice to instead tell them how to completely nuke their hard drives

If you have Firefox: Go to Tools - Clear Private Data
If you have Internet Explorer Go to Tools - Internet Options - Browsing History - Delete - Delete All

Then run Disk Cleanup and put a tick on all the boxes.

Originally Posted by Replicon

Um... when someone asks how to basically clear the browser cache and other private info, it's not very nice to instead tell them how to completely nuke their hard drives

He's getting rid of it, so it's the safest thing to do.

Some of the other comments are just a bit retarded...

Originally Posted by dragonoverlord

And when i go to youtube and i type in something like the number 2 a drop down menu comes up with lets say 2 girls 1 cup. How do i stop the computer from doing this?

The Disk Cleanup utility will get rid of that. Start > Programs > Accessories > Utilities

In Vista it's Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools.