i have run a recover and restoration program which found numerous files i do not wish to restore. is there a program that will let me delete these already deleted files from my computer? i use windows xp2. i know how to restore these files but i don't know how to completely delete these files from my computer. is there a free program that will do this? thanks for any help, van

van

 

I've had good success using SDelete from Sysinternals (now part of Microsoft).

You can download it here and it's free :cool: ->> SDelete

How to DELETE files

 

Project Athena supports a program called "delete" for removing unwanted files.

To delete a file or empty directory called "foo," you would just type:

 

delete foo

 

In order to delete a file whose name begins with a dash ("-"), you need to use

the dash option to "delete". For example, to delete a file named "-foo",

you'd type:

 

delete -- -foo

 

You may accidently create files with other weird symbols or spaces in them.

To remove these files you can often simply enclose the name in quotes, i.e.,

for a file named "foo bar" or "foo*bar" or 'foobar you could type

delete "foo bar"

or

delete "foo*bar"

or

delete "'foobar"

 

Another technique that would work is to use the wildcard character "*"

however you should be very careful when using it. Typing:

delete foo*

would remove the above examples, but it will also delete the files "foo" and

"foolish".

 

If you wish to simply rename these files you can use the command mv, eg:

mv "foo bar" foobar

To rename the file to "foobar"

 

 

The delete program does not actually remove files permanently. Instead, it

marks them for deletion, and a system cleanup program purges deleted files

that have been sitting around for more than three days. Therefore, if you

accidentally delete a file and then realize that you want it back, you can get

it back by using the program "undelete," like this:

 

undelete foo

 

The programs "expunge" and "purge" are used to actively remove deleted files

from your account permanently; the only reason you should have to use them is

if you are over your quota allowance or close to it, since files that have

been deleted but not yet permanently removed still count towards your quota.

 

The program "lsdel" allows you to list deleted files that have not yet been

permanently removed.

 

For more information, please see the man pages for delete, undelete, expunge,

purge and lsdel. For example, to see the man page for delete, type:

 

man delete

 

NOTE: The delete package is Athena-specific. The standard Unix utility for

removing files is called "rm," and it exists on Athena in addition to delete.

However, we recommend that you use delete rather than rm, since files that you

rm accidentally cannot be recovered.