Tag: DELETE

Facebook recently rolled out an update to its commenting system. Now, instead of pressing Comment, you simply press the Enter key to save a comment. More excitingly, however, Facebook silently rolled out another new feature at the same time: you can now edit comments! If you comment on a friend's status update, link or photo, you can now press the 'X' in the top right corner to edit it. Your ...

BleachBit -- the open source system clean-up utility for Windows and Linux -- has added several new features to its latest version that make it an even better tool for removing unneeded files files from your computer. Support for Google Chrome and Chromium has been greatly improved: BleachBit can now remove everything from DNS prefetch data, to autofill history and DOM storage. Support for HTML5 ...

I've previously covered Eraser for deleting files securely. Eraser stayed installed on my system for a while, and I must say that, eventually, I found it annoying. It autostarted on boot and despite my attempts to keep it from doing so, it persisted. Just the other day, I finally uninstalled Eraser -- and today, I found FileKiller. It's a tiny (27KB), open source, portable GUI utility for doing ...

When I wrote about Eraser, commenter jxejiehyzoli (great nick, by the way) noted that there's also SDelete, which is a simple command-line tool by Sysinternals. Since I love everything that Sysinternals does (long live Autoruns!), I decided I'd try the massive 46KB download. It's a single file that you can place anywhere on your system or on a USB drive. If you place it in your path (for example, ...

Getting rid of a Facebook account is notoriously difficult, but it may have just become doable with a new "delete account" button that Facebook is testing. Previously, users were able to deactivate their accounts -- although it wasn't too easy -- but Facebook would keep the data on file, so if the user came back to the Facebook flock, they could pick up where they left off. "Delete" is more ...

If you've ever received an error message when trying to delete a file, then you know what Unlocker is for. It's a free utility for deleting or moving files that are locked by a Windows process -- which is why Unlocker has long been a part of my malware-busting toolkit. If you've got a 64-bit Windows system, you might have tried an existing version only to find out that it can't work its ...

I admit it -- I'm not much of a Recycle Bin user. Usually if I press the delete key on my Windows system I'm also holding down the shift key for instant vaporization. If, however, you enjoy the safety net that the Recycle Bin provides and you're using Windows 7, you really should check out RecycleBinEx. It's made by the same developers who created FCleaner -- a very capable CCleaner ...

Deleting an app in Mac OS X is sometimes as simple as dragging it to the trash, but more often than not, there are associated files and preferences scattered around your hard drive. When you want to delete an app the right way, without leaving behind those pesky related files, give TrashMe a shot. It's a free app deleter from JibApps that's compatible with OS X 10. Snow Leopard. I've tried ...

Sure, there may be all sorts of ways to minimize the spamminess of Google Buzz -- I walked through some of them on this blog a few days ago -- but now there's a fast way to fully disable it. You can delete your profile, remove all the people you follow, disconnect all your other profiles (like Reader), and never see Buzz again. All you have to do is find that little "turn Buzz off" link at the ...

Deleting your account from a social networking site can be as hard as canceling a gym membership or convincing a telemarketer that you're not interested in their product. Social networking sites and other online services don't want you to delete your account. There's value for them in being able to quote huge and growing user numbers, regardless of whether those users are happy to be there (though ...

One of my resolutions this year was to stick to a regular system maintenance plan. I've got CCleaner set up to purge garbage files and prune my registry, Security Essentials doing nightly scans for malware, and the Windows 7 backup utility saving my important files to an external hard drive. A handy little tool I'm adding to my routine is Vanity Remover. It's a small, portable tool designed to ...

The Windows recycle bin can be a life-saver for anyone who's a little trigger-happy with the delete button. By default, Windows sends deleted items to the recycle bin before removing them, which means that you have to take the second step of emptying the bin before they're truly (mostly) gone. And that means if you accidentally delete an item, you have a second chance to recover it. Unless the ...

Windows is a nice foundation, but there are some simple functions that have long been missing from the OS - like secure file deletion. RightDelete is just about the simplest app you'll find for adding that functionality. It's a free 156kb download for Windows 98 or better. Extract and launch the executable and you'll be asked to confirm adding an entry to your context menu. You'll need the ...

While it's not something you have to do often, removing files that are locked by Windows can be a pain. To make things easier on yourself, grab Boot Deleter, a tiny application that you can integrate into Windows' right-click context menu. Locate the problem file on your drive, click it, and choose delete on reboot. When your system restarts, Boot Deleter will remove them automatically before ...

Want to delete some files on your hard disk and make sure that no one will ever be able to recover them? Wipe File is a free Windows utility that lets you wipe files or directories using one of 14 different methods. Instead of simply moving files to the recycle bin, Wipe File will overwrite the section of your hard drive that contained the file making it difficult, if not impossible for anyone ...