Software that wipes personal info but leaves Windows in tact?

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oldpablo

Supreme [H]ardness
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I have a friend that is quitting a job and they are wondering how they can wipe their personal info from the drive without formatting it. Nothing due to paranoia or dubious of the laptop, they are just a thorough kind of person. It got me thinking, is there any software like that? Something that will empty out things like documents folders, wipe all histories in IE and windows, clear out temp folder, etc., but leave windows in tact? Something like sysprep except more thorough assuming the PC has been used.
 
some sort of secure file deletion app... can't think of any off the top of my head.

they delete the files then overwrite the sectors on the hdd they were located at.

SDelete may be what you're looking for
 
Quikstrumental said:
Normally you can simply delete their local/cached profile.
Click to expand...

True, but this employee might not be able to do that. You can't delete your own profile when it's in use, and they might not have the privileges of doing it another way (logging on as admin and deleting it, mapping to the drive and deleting it, etc.)

I suppose he/she could try to use something like Hiren's or UBCD to bypass any Windows restrictions, but keep in mind deleting your user profile might look really suspicious to the company as most people wouldn't have the desire or knowledge to do that.

OldPueblo said:
I have a friend that is quitting a job and they are wondering how they can wipe their personal info from the drive without formatting it. Nothing due to paranoia or dubious of the laptop, they are just a thorough kind of person. It got me thinking, is there any software like that? Something that will empty out things like documents folders, wipe all histories in IE and windows, clear out temp folder, etc., but leave windows in tact?
Click to expand...

There might be software that will do those things, but is there a reason your friend can't do all that stuff manually? Log on, delete browser history/cache/etc., delete contents of My Documents and other folders, so on and so forth. What kind of user account do they have? Would they even be able to install such a program if it existed (due to account restrictions, if any)?

And why bother at all if there's nothing to hide? I doubt the IT department is going to care about, or have time to go through this person's favorites, browser cache, temp folders, etc. I'm just not sure why your friend even wants to do this. Deleting all traces of his/her account will just look odd and arouse suspicion, as I noted earlier.
 
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