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Termyn8or -> RE: Do you know whats on your pc? (11/8/2009 9:20:45 PM)
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It doesn't even take a virus. Every page you visit is stored on your harddrive in a cache, which operates on a FIFO basis (first in first out). Windows will deliberately not reconstruct those pages from the cache, but they are there. What's more is you can't really delete them.
That's why clearing the cache is overrated. All it does is allow an overwrite when for some reason it would not before, because any stored info in the cache should be updated with every visit to the page. I don't know what happens exactly, but apparently there is a read only propery embedded in the file which prevents the update. When that file gets corrupted you are screwed. You must take the cache down to zero MB to run now. Go to the websites that exhibited problems and let it start over. Now you restore the cache to it former limit and it fixes it up. But this only works about ten percent of the time. And cookies are a different issue.
However if your OS is old, when you restore up the cache capacity, all of the sudden a whole bunch of files show up. That means they were never really deleted. The only real way to delete is to overwrite that section of the disk. I hope I got buyers of used PCs pissing their pants by now. Don't worry though, the same info that will put you under suspicion will get you out of trouble. Things can get very complex though if you let others use your PC.
They hide this cache under a few layers of directories, I have found it in 95 and 98, and maybe in XP, but I am having troble getting them to display. But they are still there until overwritten.
Twenty years ago big HDs might've been what, 100 MB ? Even then, like of a government facility replaces their PCs and decides to sell off the old ones, there are programs that overwrite every single part of a HD almost. One version, that costs, does it like 8 or 10 times, and is called the DOD version. DOD stands for Department Of Defense. They wouldn't let it go out the door without this procedure.
Even so, at great cost the data can still be retrieved, even most of it that has been overwritten. Run the DOD on it and you don't make it impossible. You make it cost over $100,000, but you do not make it impossible. The only way you can do that is to physically destroy the drive, making sure the platters are all bent up and you'll see the plating delineating from the base of each platter. Then and only then are the data unrecoverable.
Feel safer now ?
T
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