I have a company computer that is leased. Every three years we have to turn them in to the company for new ones. It is a strict company policy not to use it for personal use and they are very strict about it. That is easier said than done. I have used the Internet for personal use and I have also worked on and stored personal files and folders on the hard drive. I need to turn it in for a new one, but I need to make sure I have everything deleted off the hard drive. I also need to make sure there are no traces from where I used the internet for personal use. I need to make sure any of this information can't be recovered. I did not use it for anything bad or illegal, just your normal everyday use. Thanks in advance for you help. It's not how smart you are, but knowing where to find the resorces.

There are more than a few utilities that will help you accomplish your mission. Simply writing zeros to the disk is an option.

I think the OP only want to purge whatever he has been doing with the company computer before turning it in for a new one. i_Xp/VistaUser

simply said...just purging personal information and leaving the other stuff is an impossibility....I don't know of any programs out there that can perform that feat. As sabertooth first replied...there are many programs that will over write the harddrive and or wipe the whole drive so that things cannot be brought up in the future and writing the drive to "0's" is about the best that can be done...the problem is that it takes an extremely long time to perform such am action on the large drives that are in use today. In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

You might try Secure Shredder, which is part of Spybot Search & Destroy. It can be found under tools. Has under templates letting you shred Internet Explorer cookies, cache etc. Default shred is set to 5. Right clicking in the filename area lets you add other files you might want to shred. Haven't tried a test to see if recovery software can recover files that the shredder was used on.

Manually delete all your personal data. Then run CCleaner. CCleaner (Click on Download from FileHippo......, in the PayPal box) Alternate download for CCleaner Once you download and install it, open the program then click on (on the left hand side) OPTIONS, then COOKIES. Any cookies you want to save (trusted sites, places you have usernames/passwords), highlight them in the left column, then (using the directional arrows between the panes), move them to the right hand column under "Cookies to keep". Still under Options, click on Advanced. Remove the check mark from the box for "Only delete files in Windows Temp folders older than 48 hours" Then click on Cleaner (on the top left). When that window opens, click on Run Cleaner (bottom right of the window.) When it finishes, close CCleaner, and restart your machine. Then run RegSeeker to perform additional cleanups. http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm When you open RegSeeker, on the left, click on "Clean the Registry", then place a check mark in the box for "Invalid Services (Experimental)". Click OK. Progress is reported at the bottom of the window. When it's finished, click on "Select" (under the found entries area)and select all entries. Then click on "Action" (to the right of "Select") and delete all entries. Follow the prompts for backing up anything removed. File name and location will be provided. Do a check to see if everything has been cleaned up, then delete the RegSeeker backup .reg file. Then defrag the system drives. It's a good day when you learn something

I guess Dan Penny's suggestion is the best you can do without nuking the entire HD. i_Xp/VistaUser