Completely removing history

[Wood]

A computer I used at the office is going into new hands soon most likely. I would like to completely eliminate any history of internet surfing. How can the mostly computer illiterate do this safely?

The computor has some much needed software on it that is used for business daily and I would not want to mess that up. I surf through AOL and have spybot. Advanced spybot S & D has a shredder-if I simply run the AOL through the shredder, delete the cookies and history, will it completely eliminate ANYBODY from finding internet surfing history - no matter what software they used to search the computor?

The computer had AOL installed, then removed, then installed, then removed - is there a way to find the old places the former AOL internet information was stored on the computor and make sure all tracks are covered up?

Should I just hire an expert to do it for me - and how do I find one I can trust?

[archive_Ulter]

Which operating system is on it?

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." -Albert Einstein

[macdaddy]

Go to http://www.anonymizer.com and buy their program ($30), it comes with a system sweeper that will whack everything pretty good, also I'd download AdAware from www.download.com (http://www.download.com) and run that. System sweeper is "military grade" file deletion.

After you whack everything remove those two programs before you turn it back in.

[Wood]

How do I tell which operating system it is?

[archive_Ulter]

right click on My Computer, click properties

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." -Albert Einstein

[Wood]

The office computer runs windows 98 - is that what you mean?

[Monster]

Bro... just stay off those damn "Barnyard Love" sites and you wont have to worry about it.
http://www.anabolicfitness.net/smileys/lol2[1].gif

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Monsterland Is (NOT)Open Again!!! (http://68.43.66.69:66/monsterland.htm) (dont say you werent warned...)

"Trying is the first step towards failure."
http://www.bodo.com/simpsons/zhomerb.gif "Well, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is... never try."

[archive_Ulter]

Sorry bro, I can't help you with 98. I honestly don't remember it anymore and I don't a box running it.

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." -Albert Einstein

[Monster]

There used to be a program out there, I think called "incinerator" (?). It did a hell of a job of it... it renames the item to a random value (so you cant trace it back), overwrites it multiple times (instead of a "delete" that just drops it from plain view), and truncates the items length to zero so even a binary scan wouldnt work, since you couldnt tell where the file started or stopped in comparison to another file.

Other than that you could just reformat and reinstall the OS...

Im hazy on Win98, everything I have is on 2000, XP Pro or Linux...

-------------------------
Monsterland Is (NOT)Open Again!!! (http://68.43.66.69:66/monsterland.htm) (dont say you werent warned...)

"Trying is the first step towards failure."
http://www.bodo.com/simpsons/zhomerb.gif "Well, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is... never try."

[archive_PDOGGY]

BCWIPE.

It works.

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