Over the last two years, CCleaner has changed quite a bit in terms of version numbers…up now to version 3.10 at the time of this writing. While visually the program actually hasn’t changed much (it’s good, why break something that’s not broken?), a lot of additional features have been included behind-the-scenes to make it more functional than ever.

About CCleaner and Installation

CCleaner is the most updated program out of all the Piriform offerings (CCleaner, Defraggler, and Recuva), and will ask you to update practically once every week or two. In case you haven’t installed CCleaner yet or want to check for updates without opening the program, you can head over to this page, download the setup file, and run it. During installation, I recommend that you actually look through the settings, as there may be a few preferences you may not want, such as menu options for the Recycle Bin.

Clean Out Temporary Files

CCleaner lives up to its name in a number of different ways. First, you can go through the usual temporary files of any supported applications. This includes the usual list of browsers, system, and some other lesser known options such as Java. With more and more updates, the amount of supported applications increases by a lot.

Clean Out Your Bloated Registry

The second way CCleaner lives up to its name is by its registry cleaning capabilities. CCleaner can look for a number of different registry keys that are irrelevant or unusable to the system which just clutter up the registry as a whole. As far as my experience has gone, CCleaner has been the only tool that doesn’t screw up your programs after sweeping through the registry. Updates ensure that the algorithms to find these unwanted registry keys are accurate and do not disturb anything on the system.

Even More System Maintenance Options

CCleaner continues on to include some other interesting options. In order to not have to switch between multiple applications, CCleaner also includes areas where you can remove installed programs.

You can also control the list of startup applications to lessen the strain on resources and increase boot/login time.

Deleting any old system restore points (except for the newest one to ensure you still have a point to go back to in case your system immediately breaks afterwards) helps a lot too.

Finally, you can wipe a drive’s free space (or even the whole thing) completely. For the wipe procedure, you’re offered multiple options for wiping, such as 1 pass, 3 passes, 7 passes, or an incredible (and time consuming) 35 passes.

Options

Finally, CCleaner does offer a decent amount of options to customize a few aspects of how the system maintenance tool operates. There are also specific things you can include or exclude, such as cookies and other directories.

Conclusion

CCleaner could possibly be named one of the 7 wonders of computer maintenance (don’t ask me what the other 6 are, it was just a play on words). It has been extremely easy to use, and it works. Every time. Simply on occasional runs, it often cleans out over half a gigabyte of data. While your results may not be that large, as I am a fairly heavy user, your computer will thank you for using CCleaner. So if you’re one of the very few that haven’t used it yet, I highly recommend you try it out! Don’t rely on just the Windows Disk Cleaner!

Even though CCleaner can do everything except make you sandwiches, what would you like to see added to it? Let us know in the comments! Maybe with the regular updates some will be included!

If this information made you a little nervous, let me connect the pieces for you and show you how you can terminally and permanently delete files, not only from your hard drive, but also from other re-writable storage devices.

Low Level Formatting

The kind of formatting most of us do is known as high level formatting, and whether you perform a quick format or not, your data won’t be deleted. What high level formatting does is set up the file system from scratch and in the process the information where files were stored is removed.

Low level formatting on the other hand re-initializes the disk and resets the values of each and every magnetic domain, which represents one bit, to zero. We have thoroughly covered formatting on MakeUseOf and if you would like to look into the details, I recommend the following articles:

• How To Format A New Internal Hard Drive
• The Difference Between Windows Full Format & Quick Format [Technology Explained]
• How To Completely & Securely Erase Your Hard Drive [Windows]

Darik’s Boot And Nuke

Low level formatting isn’t 100% efficient and may leave traces of data. If you wish to wipe an entire disk before you dispose of it, I recommend Darik’s Boot and Nuke, a boot disk that will automatically and completely delete data on any detected hard disk.

A walkthrough of Darik’s Boot and Nuke can be found in this article:

• How To Completely & Securely Erase Your Hard Drive [Windows]

CCleaner

If you are already using CCleaner, you should know that it contains a Drive Wiper.

Open CCleaner and go to > Tools > Drive Wiper. You can wipe only free space or the entire drive, and you can choose up to 35 passes, meaning data will be overwritten with random strings of binary code 35 times. This very complex overwrite should make it impossible for anyone to restore the data originally saved in this space. When you’re happy with your settings click > Wipe and wait patiently.

SDelete

Microsoft made it very easy to not delete files thoroughly. To make up for this potential security hole, they released a free command line utility called SDelete. This doesn’t make removing data any more convenient, but it can be considered a step in the right direction. Unfortunately it is a very small step, since Microsoft fails to provide instructions on how to properly open SDelete in the first place. Well, that’s what MakeUseOf is here for.

1. Download the ZIP archive containing the tool and extract the folder.
2. Click > [WINDOWS] + [R] to open the Run window.
3. Type > cmd and click > OK to open the command prompt.
4. Then move the > SDelete.exe file to the directory > C:\User\yourusername
5. Now type a command in the command prompt, for example > sdelete -z to cleanse free space on your C: partition. A full list of commands is shown in the screenshot below.

Eraser

Eraser is a freeware and open source security tool to completely remove data from your hard drive. It can overwrite data several times using randomized patterns of binary code. It essentially is a file shredder.

Eraser is more convenient than CCleaner’s Drive Wiper because it can delete and shred single files, rather than just wiping all free space on a drive, and it is integrated with Windows Explorer (right-click menu). Moreover, Eraser provides you with a host of advanced settings, for example different file and space erasure methods, the option to replace erased files with other files to allow plausible ‘deniability’, and schedule erasure of files, folders, recycle bin, or unused disk space.

The tool is also available as a portable app called EraserDrop Portable. It is part of the PortableApps suite.

We have covered Eraser in its (and MakeUseOf’s) very beginnings four years ago. Both have come a long way since. Feel free to check out the article here - How To securely Retrieve and Delete PC Files

Other Tools

There are several more file shredders that can securely delete files from your hard drive. Some of them were covered in the article 4 File Shredders to Make Deleted Data Unrecoverable. If you need to secure sensitive data without deleting it, you should seriously look into encryption and the article Encrypt Or Completely Wipe Files With the Axcrypt Encryption Utility [Windows] provides an excellent start.

Do you have nightmares of what someone might find on an old hard drive you discarded?

Image credits: R. MACKAY PHOTOGRAPHY, LLC

Let me come back to why I went searching for a portable recycle bin utility for my USB Flash drive. Nearly every software has a little portable sibling these days. Why not the Recycle Bin?  Especially when you consider that the Recycle Bin is an unquestionable safety net. As I had mentioned in my previous post: Don’t Click Delete ““ 10 Tips for The Recycle Bin, we miss the Recycle Bin only when it goes missing.

When we click Delete on any file in a memory device like a Memory Card or more commonly a Flash Drive, the file does not go to the Recycle Bin of the connected PC but vanishes forever. Even an Undo or a CTRL-Z cannot stop the final rite of passage. Obviously this is very unlike the behavior of a computer where you have the Recycle Bin as a limbo hold. The only solution to recover lost files in memory devices is to use file recovery tools like Recuva or Smart Recovery.

iBin brings the Recycle Bin back to the USB Flash Drive. The portable recycle bin application works with any removable device in any version of Windows.

Like any other portable software, installation is dead simple. Download, unpack and run the iBin.exe file in any removable device. iBin creates the container to hold the deleted files in the device’s root folder.

When the memory device is connected, iBin works silently in the background and can be accessed from the System Tray icon with a click.

The iBin process is simple as the delete function itself. When a file deletion on, say a USB Flash drive takes place, iBin catches the action and pops up an alert.

The user has the option of deleting the file permanently or sending it to the iBin. The iBin works exactly like the Recycle Bin in that it keeps all the files unless deleted permanently. The files can be restored when needed.

iBin has two important centers of operations ““

Dumping Management

The Dumping Management window is where the user gets to see all the deleted files in a scrollable view. It’s like the Recycle Bin with the Detail view. Files and folders have different icons and the file operations can be performed using the three buttons at the bottom.

Custom Options

Set your preferences from this window. One thing you might want to tweak is the Space Limit. You can move the slider to set the size limit for the iBin container to anything like 1% to 50% (of the total free size of the memory device).

The other important setting to consider is the button which sets up the Autorun.inf file to startup iBin whenever the Flash device is connected to the computer. The Windows OS should of course, allow the autorun.inf to run for iBin to start automatically.

iBin is a very compact solution for most of us who are quick draws with the Delete button. In our trigger happiness we often forget that a file deleted from the USB Flash drive disappears forever. Keeping that bad habit in light, iBin is an almost necessary part of any portable software suite.

Will this portable recycle bin be a part of your portable software list? How important do you think it is? Let us also know if you are aware of any alternative tool for the dumping and recycling job.

iBin ver. 2.7 is compatible with all versions of Windows.

Managing waste may be a bore chore. But in the real world too, it’s where a lot of action is taking place. Think eco-consciousness and you will get the importance of recycling waste. In the world of computers too, managing the Recycle Bin is an essential chore of improving system performance.

Can we guess the importance from this ““ The Recycle Bin is the only icon shown by default on the Windows XP desktop.

We all have had some run-ins with Recycle Bin problems. From wanting to change its icon to hunting for a way to get back its default icon. Or probably the most frequent ““ rummaging within it to find the accidentally deleted file. I know I have had my share. So over the years, my search for solutions and quick fixes has resulted in a nice collection of tricks and tips. Gradually, I have come to realize that like the real world our system’s garbage can needs constant management too. Thankfully there exists lots of free ways to customize the Recycle Bin to our liking.

Caution: Some of the tweaks involve editing the registry. If you do not know your way around the registry please bypass the steps. Always backup your registry before any changes.

So now, let’s do some dumpster diving with these 10 ways to deal with the Recycle Bin.

Change the size of the Recycle Bin

By default the size allocated to the Recycle Bin is 10% of the drive size. If you delete any file that’s larger than that, Windows will prompt you with a message. So you can increase the size.

On the other side, a 20GB drive will have a bin size of 2GB. If you consider this to be a waste of space then you can decrease the size.

• Right click on the desktop Recycle Bin icon and choose Properties.
• Using the Global tab, you can set a uniform size for all the drives by selecting Use one setting for all drive. Or configure each drive independently by selecting Configure drives independently.
• Move the slider according to the size you want to set. For all drives, use the Global tab. For independent sizes, use the tab for the drives. Click on OK and dump as much as you want.

Change the name

If the ‘Recycle Bin’ is too mechanical for you, it’s easy to rename the bin to something like Nuked! Here’s how with a registry edit. (It’s the REGISTRY ““ be careful!)

• Click Start ““ Run ““ type in regedit to open the registry editor.
• Drill down to the following key – HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache
• On the right hand pane, double click on this value string – @C:\WINDOWS\system32\SHELL32.dll,-8964
• Change the Value data to what you want to name the bin. Click OK and exit the registry editor.
• Refresh the desktop to see the name change.

Change the Recycle Bin icon

The Recycle Bin icon can be changed easily from the Desktop Properties applet.

• Right click on an empty area of the desktop. Select Properties.
• In Display Properties, select the Desktop tab.
• Click on the Customize Desktop button ““ the Desktop Items box opens on the General tab.
• Select the Recycle Bin icon – click on Change Icon. The choice of icons by default is provided by the Shell32.dll file. You can opt for one or browse to your favorite icon for the Recycle Bin. Click on OK to set it.

Hide the Recycle Bin

There are many reasons you may wish to hide the Recycle Bin from the desktop (e.g. if you want to use Docks or a Mac-like theme). The free, non-registry way is to use the Group Policy Editor.

• Click Start ““ Run – type GPEDIT.MSC and enter.
• Expand User Configuration – Administrative Templates and click on Desktop.
• On the right pane, double click on Remove Recycle Bin Icon from Desktop ““ In the Properties window click on Enabled.
• Press OK to exit. To show it again, just select Not Configured.

Note: The Group Policy Editor is not available in Windows XP Home edition.

Restore the Recycle Bin icon

It’s easy to hide the recycle bin icon. But what if some system error has deleted the icon forever? Then we have to head into the registry for the repair job.

• Click Start ““ Run ““ type in regedit to open the registry editor.
• Drill down to the following key – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace
• Create a new key by right-clicking on it ““ New ““ Key
• Enter the value {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}. Click Enter.
• On the right hand pane, right click on the default value”¦click on Modify. Enter any name for the recycle bin in the Value Data field of the Edit string box.
• Click on OK and exit from the registry editor. The recycle bin gets restored.

Skip the Confirm Delete Box and the Recycle Bin

Deleting a file makes a Confirm Folder Delete box pop-up. Though, changing this safety net action is not recommended”¦it is easy to do so.

• Right click on the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop. Click on Properties.
• Uncheck the Display delete confirmation dialog. Click on Apply and OK.
• Also if you don’t want to bypass the Recycle Bin completely, in the same window, select the Do not move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files immediately when deleted check box. Alternatively, you can hold Shift when doing a delete.

Empty the Recycle Bin with a right click on the context menu

There are several registry fixes which are available as downloadable .reg files. But to understand the entries they change, I think it’s better to go with the manual option.

• Click on Start ““ Run ““ type in regedit. Hit OK.
• Drill down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
• Right-click it, and create a new key – Recycle Bin
• Select the new key, and right click the default value to modify it on the right pane.
• Enter the value {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}.
• Click OK and close the Registry Editor to bring an Empty Recycle Bin command into the context menu.

Move the Recycle Bin to the system tray

If you want to recover one icon’s worth of screen real estate and also don’t want to remove the Recycle Bin completely, then a small tool called MiniBin could be the solution. As the developer site says, this little 43KB download can come handy if you want to hide the recycle bin from the desktop. The software does not need an installation. To make it start with Windows, you can include it in your startup folder.

Change how the Recycle Bin sounds

If you like to have your own sound play when the recycle bin is emptied,

• Go to Control Panel ““ Sounds and Audio Devices.
• Click on the Sounds tab. Under Program events go down to Windows Explorer ““ Empty Recycle Bin.
• Select any other sound from the defaults under the Sounds dropdown or browse to the location of your own wav file. Test it with a click of the little black arrow.

Bring Recycle Bin into focus when it’s hidden

This cool trick only works if the recycle bin remains at its default bottom right location on the desktop. You can bring the recycle bin back into focus if it’s obscured by a lot of open windows. Simply drag the files you want to delete into an empty area of the taskbar. All open windows minimize automatically and you can simply drop the files into the bin.

If you notice, deleting a file is probably the most long drawn Windows process. From selecting a file to deleting it, clicking on the confirmation, emptying the recycle bin and again confirming the action. Even then the file can be recovered using recovery tools as Windows does not immediately write over it. So in short, Windows gives us a lot of time to go over our decision to delete a file.

The Recycle bin has been called a safety net. That’s why it deserves our attention and all the tips and tricks we can muster. Do you know of any other?

Image Credit: London Permaculture

I guess it’s because they want us to stay forever but sometimes you just really don’t like the site or maybe you are trying to clean up your accounts (because you have so many all over the net).

Whatever the reason may be, I’m sure you’ll find that this little cheat sheet will make deleting those unwanted accounts quick, easy and painless.

Yahoo

There are two ways to delete your Yahoo account. The first way is to totally abandon it for at least four months. Inactive Yahoo accounts are deactivated after four months so if you’re in no rush to get rid of it, you can simply stop using it.

The other way to delete your Yahoo account is to visit the Account Termination page.

• Log into your Yahoo account. If you’re already logged in you may have to re-enter your password just for verification purposes.
• Click here to get to the Account Termination page.

Facebook

Facebook offers two options. You can either deactivate your account or permanently delete it. Of course, the deactivation method is much easier to find than the permanent deletion option. One thing you should know is that if you deactivate your Facebook account, your profile information will still be saved such as your friends, photos, interests, etc. On the other hand, permanently deleting your account will remove all of your information from Facebook and nothing will be saved.

To deactivate your account:

• Hover your mouse over the Settings menu in the top right of any Facebook page and click on “Account Settings”.
• Click on the “Deactivate Account” link at the bottom of the page.

To permanently delete your account:

• Click on Help at the bottom of any Facebook page.
• Search for “delete account” in the search box underneath the Help Center heading.
• Click on the “I want to permanently delete my account” link and read the 2 paragraphs there.



• Click on the link at the end of the last paragraph, read what’s there and then click the “Submit” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

MySpace

MySpace makes things a little bit easier, no searching needed.

• Click on “My Account” in the top right corner of any MySpace page.
• Click on the “Account” link.
• Click on the “Cancel Account” link at the bottom of the page.
• Select the reason why you want to cancel your account, and then click the “Cancel My Account” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Ning

One thing about Ning is that even when you delete your account, the content that you’ve added to any social networks you were a part of will remain on those networks. If you don’t want your content to remain, you’ll have to delete it yourself. An easy way to do that is to simply leave each network you belong to separately before deleting your actual Ning account.

In order to leave a social network on Ning:

• Sign into the network.
• Click on the “My Settings” link in the top of the right hand column.
• Click on the “Leave (Social Network Name Here)” link at the bottom of that page.

To leave the Ning network altogether you will have to contact Ning by clicking here. There is no option in the “I have a question about” menu for deleting an account so you will have to pick which one you think fits best.

MSN

Just like Yahoo there are two ways to delete your MSN account. You can either stop using your account for 30 days or delete it manually. After 30 days of non-use your MSN account will become inactive and after 90 days your passport will become inactive.

To manually delete your MSN account:

• Click on the little arrow next to your name in the top right corner of any Hotmail page.
• Click on the “View Your Account” menu option.
• Click on the “Close Account” link at the bottom of the page.
• Read the info, enter your password to verify your identity and then click on the “Yes” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Twitter

Note: If there are issues with Twitter, the option to delete you account will be disabled and you’ll get an alert message like the one picture below. So, hopefully Twitter is in good shape if and when you try to delete your account.

• Click on the “Settings” link in the top right corner of any Twitter page.
• Click on the “Delete My Account” link at the bottom left side of the page.
• Confirm that you want to delete your account.
• Click here for the easy route.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is another site that makes you do a little searching before being able to delete your account.

• Click on the “help” link at the bottom of any FriendFeed page.
• Click on the “Using FriendFeed” header to expand it.
• Click on the “How do I delete my account?” link which will be the last link under that section.
• Enter your password in the first box, type the word “delete” in the next box, enter the reason why you’re deleting your account in the last box.
• Click on the “Permanently delete my account” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

Jaiku

Jaiku has the account deletion option right where you’d expect it to be.

• Click on the “Settings” link in the top right of any Jaiku page.
• Click on the “Your Profile” link under the Account heading.
• Click on the “Want to delete your account?” link at the bottom of the page.
• Click on the “Goodbye Cruel World, Goodbye” button.
• Click here for the easy route.

If there are any other websites that we haven’t mentioned here, why don’t you tell us how to cancel an account on that site?

Image Credit : Gaudium De Lingua

The internal hard disks available in the market, on the other hand, require to be prepared before use. By preparing a hard drive, I mean that the hard drive needs to be formatted. And no, it isn’t as tough as it sounds.

So, how do you format a nwe internal hard drive and make the hard drive useable by your operating system? The answer depends on which operating system you are using. I use both Windows XP and Linux for my work and I will be explaining the steps needed to format new disks under both these operating systems.

Of course, I’m assuming that you have already attached your disk to your computer and the computer is able to boot up with the older hard disk.

So, once you’ve logged into the administrator account under Windows XP, what you need to do is right click on the “My computer” icon and click on Manage.

This should open the Computer Management tool. Now to view the newly attached disk go to the Disk Management service.

As soon as you click on disk management, a wizard should pop up which will help you to initialize your new disk. At this point, you can just let the wizard do its job and when its done, you should be able to see your new disk in an unallocated state.This does not mean that the disk is bad, but it means that you have successfuly completed the first part of the process and can proceed to the second part.

This is where you need to create a partition, and give your new disk a drive name, like c:, d: etc, so that you can use it under Windows.

The new partition wizard will take you through a series of steps and let you specify the size of the partition (if you don’t want the whole disk to be allocated to a single drive), the drive letter and the file system type. In almost all cases, you can simply chose the default options and let the wizard work its magic.

In the end, you should have a shiny new drive available for storing your MP3 collection important documents.

In case you are using Linux then the process is a little more involved. I’m assuming that you are familiar with the Linux command prompt as most of these steps have to be performed on the command prompt. So, login as root and fire up the command prompt application before starting.

You will have to first use the fdisk command to find the name of the newly attached drive and then use the same command to create a partition on the disk.

As you can see, the “fdisk -l” command lists two drives attached to the system, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.

The /dev/sda drive has a Linux partition and is your main operating system drive. So, the newly attached drive is /dev/sdb and it doesn’t have any partitions on it, yet. To create a new partition on the drive, use the interactive form of the fdisk command.

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk /dev/sdb
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won’t be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0×0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e   extended
p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-100, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-100, default 100):
Using default value 100

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
[root@localhost ~]#

Now, to format this partition, use the mkfs command on partition number 1 of /dev/sdb that we created above.

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1

That should be enough to make the new drive visible to your operating system and you should be able to mount and use the drive.

mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb /mount_point

So, as you you don’t have to be a computer genuis to format an internal hard drive. It is not as complicated as it sounds and you all can do it. If you guys have any more questions, please let us know in the comments and we’ll be glad to help.