Sting said:
The best free one that I know of is Eraser, it works with all the windows
operating systems. You can find it here:
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ Enjoy.
Well, I would add a word of caution here.
Recently downloaded Eraser Ver. 5.7 and installed it. Never could get
it to run quite the way I thought it should--could be my own stupidity.
And, the shell extension links in the
right-click context menus in Windows Explorer just disappeared after a
bit. Also I began to have problems booting my system, so I decided to
uninstall Eraser, as that was the most recent change to the system.
After the uninstall was when my REAL problems began. At boot time, the
system would hang after getting most of my desktop constructed, and I
would get a message that "Zone Alarm is trying to start VSMON" but
having problems--do I want to cancel that? When I clicked Cancel,
nothing would happen--I mean NOTHING. The system would hang solid.
The
mouse pointer would move, but I could not get any action from clicking
any icon, not even the START button. I could do the old "3 finger
salute" and bring up the Task Manager, where I would see VSMON as "Not
Responding". Also, the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar would be listed
as
"Not Responding". Clicking End Task for either of those would then
bring up the window saying the task would not end, etc. Clicking
Shutdown would bring up a seemingly endless chain of the "Task Will Not
End" windows, and the system would hang solidly. It would not even
respond to CTL+ALT+DEL. The only recourse was the Reset button.
All of this after I installed, then uninstalled Eraser I thought about
looking at the list of
modules used by Eraser (from the ERASER.LGC) file, and comparing their
dates with the originals on the Windows install disk (5/11/98), with an
eye toward corrupted system modules. I could also run SFC, but there
might be other modules changed by other software which that would
damage. Finally got all running well by preventing Zone Alarm from
starting at Startup, AND all the Office stuff. Deleted the contents of
C:\WINDOWS\APPLOG so all that could start from scratch. Eventually
started Zone Alarm manually--it would balk every once in a while with
the VSMON hang. After a day or so, that disappeared, and I set ZA to
start at boot time again. All has been well for a few days.
I run an essentially unpatched W98FE system, which has been stable with
no glitches since I rebuilt it back in March this year. I also run AVG
Free
version and Zone Alarm Pro, Ver. 2.6.231. (Before you turn up your
nose
at the old version, it has worked with everything I do--faithfully--for
a long time!) I use either Mozilla or Netscape to surf the web, and
Netscape Messenger for mail and news group browsing. Also regularly
run
Adaware, Spybot S&D, and CWShredder. So, I feel pretty confident that
my system is bug free.
So, I suggest that you back up your system before you try Eraser.
Stranger