Windows Wiper (Wipe03) Help
Windows Wiper (Wipe03) is a free Win32 command-line tool for advanced users. It is intended to be a Swiss army knife tool, that you can use alone or inside batch files and customize it to your particular system configuration and needs. Read this help page entirely before you use Wipe03. Version 1.1.7 fixes a bug in handling secondary NTFS streams.
- Deleting Files and Folders
- Secondary NTFS Streams
- Emptying Recycle Bin
- Deleting Internet Explorer and Windows History
- Example History Customization: Deleting Mozilla and Firefox History
- Wiping Unused Disks Space
- Wiping old Master File Table (MFT) Entries
- Viewing Raw Disk Data
- Usage Hints
Deleting Files and Folders
There are several possibilities to safely delete individual files of folders with Wipe03:
- Add a shortcut to wipe.exe to the 'Send To' menu. Modify the shortcut Target by adding the following arguments after wipe.exe:
wipe.exe /# /! /: You can also add other wipe options like /F (fast wipe mode) or /H (hard wipe mode).
After this you can select any file or folder and select 'Sent To / Wipe03' from the Explorer context menu.
- Copy any files of folders you like from the Windows Explorer or just copy paths from a text file. Then open a command line window where you can run wipe and type:
wipe /K Wipe03 will list all the files / lines it finds in the system clipboard. After this type:
wipe /K /D /E The /D option will delete the files, whereas /e will clean the clipboard when finished.
- If your file paths are in a text file then use:
wipe03 /L listfile.txt This will delete all files / folders whose names are inside listfile.txt one per line. The /Z option is like /L but will instruct wipe03 to delete the files at next system startup. This can be useful for locked files. It is recommended you run the /Z option from the folder wipe.exe is found so the path to wipe.exe can be properly set. The /Z option may require administrator rights.
- To wipe files based on a wildcards pattern use:
wipe /P c:\mydir *.bmp /R This will look recursively (/R) in folder c:\mydir and safely delete all bitmap files.
A temporary directory named 'drive:\w0p3\' is created in each of processed volumes by some of the commands. Do NOT use these directories for your files. If you have directories with this name under root directories, rename them BEFORE running these commands! Do NOT clean these folders using wipe directly. Use the /T option. If you interrupt wipe (also during /M or /W), then use /T option to clean all data in w0p3 temporary directories. To protect from accidental delete this directory is never deleted / cleaned automatically.
Compressed, encrypted and sparse files - for these files use /O option to set the wipe mode automatically set to /H for modes /F, /S. For another way to delete such files see: http:// www.sysinternals.com/ ntw2k/ source/ sdelete.shtml
Important: Bad disk sectors may interrupt the wipe process silently. Use chkdsk with the /F option before using wipe, if you suspect your hard disk has any unfixed bad sectors.
Secondary NTFS Streams (Alternative Data Streams)
Secondary and custom NTFS streams, if any, are automatically deleted (wiped) completely by default. Versions older that 1.1.7 contain a bug in handling NTFS streams and should not be used.
Sometimes, it is preferable to delete only the secondary NTFS streams if any, but not the file itself (the main stream). This may be needed because Windows shell and some shell related programs, such as IE, may save data in secondary streams (for example the IE security zone information for the downloaded files in XP SP2). To get rid of these data (all secondary NTFS streams for a file) use:
The file.exe will not be deleted only its secondary NTFS streams if any, e.g., file.exe:Zone.Identifier:$DATA. To only check for the presence and view the secondary NTFS streams, if any, use (the data can be verbose):
When used with folders, e.g. 'wipe /@ c:\mydir', the /@ does not delete the (sub) folders, only the secondary NTFS streams for all files inside a folder and its sub folders.
Emptying Recycle Bin
To empty recycle bin use type:
If you do not want to type this all the time, Wipe03 provides an option to install itself to the context menu of the Recycle Bin icon in the Windows Explorer. To activate this option type:
A new menu item named 'Empty Securely with Wipe03' will be added to the Recycle Bin context menu.
It is recommended you run this command from the folder wipe.exe is found so the path to wipe.exe can be properly set.
To deactivate this option type:
Deleting Internet Explorer and Windows History
Wipe03 can generate a ready made batch file that wipes most of windows and internet explorer data customized for your system. To generate this file type:
The 2> redirector is required because Wipe03 writes the output file to the standard error stream.
The generated file name will be ieclean.bat (you can use any name instead of ieclean.bat). Before you use this file you may need to edit and customize it. Open the file with Notepad and change the paths to Wipe03 exe and its directory as shown:
Save the file and run it every time you need to clean the Internet Explorer data.
You can customize this batch file with more items if you like. To customize it add all wipe commands you like in the end of ieclean.bat file before ENDLOCAL.
If you are lazy to remember to wipe Internet Explorer history all the time then, you can create a new batch file, to delete it before you close your computer. To do this create a new batch file named for example 'shutdown.bat' and enter the follwing commands to it:
Of course replace 'c:\ieclean.bat' with the path where 'ieclean.bat' is found in your system and 'wipe.exe' with the full path to 'wipe.exe'. Place 'shutdown.bat' in the desktop and click it everytime when you want to shutdown the system, rather the usual window shutdown menu
Example History Wipe Customization: Deleting Mozilla and Firefox History
Wipe03 has no build is support for Mozilla ( and Firefox - Firefox now saves the history data in the local user profile and the paths in this example may need to change slightly). However, you can easily customize the wipe /I /B generated file (e.g. ieclean.bat) to include Mozilla based browsers history (2005-08-05).
To customize ‘ieclean.bat’ follow these steps. Open ‘ieclean.bat’ in a text editor, e,g., Notepad. In the end of ‘ieclean.bat’ change (uncomment) the line:
Save the ‘ieclean.bat’ and close it. (You may choose to use an absolute path for ‘userclean.bat’, for example ‘C:\test\userclean.bat’. Absolute paths work better when you start the ‘ieclean.bat’ from a shortcut.)
Use this file userclean.zip as an example 'userclean.bat’ file.
To customize the example 'userclean.bat’ file, open the ‘userclean.bat’ file in a text editor and follow these steps:
- Change the next line to point to the absolute path of wipe.exe.
SET WIPE_PATH=wipe.exe Change the wipe mode. Default is /S (three overwrite passes):SET MODE=/S - Modify these lines to point to the 'Application Data' folder for the user and your system (Note, do not use " quotes):
SET APP_DATA=C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data SET ALL_APP_DATA=C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data SET LOCAL_APP_DATA=C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings \Application Data - Find the Mozilla and FireFox profile folders (usually found in the locations shown below). Note ose only one starting " quote.
SET MOZILLA_PROFILE_DIR=%APP_DATA%\Mozilla call mozilla.bat "%MOZILLA_PROFILE_DIR%\Profiles\default\mf5mvl0o.slt call mozilla.bat "%MOZILLA_PROFILE_DIR%\Firefox\Profiles\pkfy462t.default The end of the profile path is a random folder name different for each user profile. Find the ones for your system and replace above. Add as many call lines to 'mozilla.bat' as profiles you have.
- Important! Inside each profile folder there is a file named ‘localstore.rdf’. This file requires some special manual preparation. It maintains some of the configuration that you make. So once you have finished configuring your browser profile make a copy of ‘localstore.rdf’ as follows. For each profile make a copy of this file with the name ‘copy-localstore.rdf’ in the same folder as ‘localstore.rdf’.
Then open the ‘copy-localstore.rdf’ file in a text editor and remove everything between these lines (but not these lines):
<RDF:Seq RDF:about="nc:urlbar-history"> </RDF:Seq> If you do not find these lines, then do not remove anything. The lines you removed contain the typed URL history in Mozilla. The mozilla.bat file will wipe the original ‘localstore.rdf’ and replace it the clean ‘copy-localstore.rdf’ every time you run the script.
The script will overwrite the Mozilla’s locked history files, so it is better to close Mozilla / Firefox before you run this script.
You can also add other custom history data to be deleted. The ‘userclen.bat’ file contains some more examples.
Wiping Unused Disks Space
Files you have not deleted with Wipe03 remain in the unused sectors of the hard disk. To remove them you need to run:
Replace 'C:' with each drive that you have. Only local drives are supported. Since this operation takes a long time to finish depending on the free space on your hard drive, run it at night and then use always wipe.exe to delete all future files you need to destroy.
Note: Wipe03 /W command cleans only the free disk space. It does not clean the free space that may be in the end of files or directory indexes, which is often searched to find clues about old data. We offer another free tool WipeSpace to properly delete this space.
Wiping old Master File Table (MFT) Entries
Even thought you delete the unused space the old file names (those not wiped by wipe03) still remain in the hard disk. There is no straight method to remove these old file names from MFT. Wipe03 however can wipe old MFT entries with the /M option in NTFS volumes only. The method desribed next wipes the data of 99% to 100% of all old unused MFT entries (it does not remove the MFT entries, only overwrites their data safely with random values).
The wipe /M option requires a file count, which is the number of unused MFT entries in a volume. The file count can be calculated as follows. The calculations listed below have been verified to be correct.
The exact data can be found at: Disk Defragmenter / Analyze / View Report (screenshot). For example, after you use this windows tool you may get:
- MFT record count = 119 728 (that is used and unused, let us call it MFTTotal)
- Percent MFT in use = 87 (that is used in %, let us call it MFTUsed%)
Then count1 = ((100 - 87) * 119728) / 100 = 15564 files.
That is MFTUnused = ((100 - MFTUsed%) * MFTTotal) / 100
Let suppose that the count you found is 15564. Then to wipe the old MFT entries you can use:
The /L switch is optional but is recommended as it cuts the time required to clean up the temporary data.
Depending on the file count number passed to /M this operation may take a long time. We recommend to run it when no other programs are running. To make sure that the names of the deleted files do not remain in the MFT in the future, use wipe03 to delete the files.
Use 'wipe /T /L' to clear the temporary data if you interrupt 'wipe /M' by using CTRL+C.
Using /M is safe. The only side-effect of /M is that it may slightly grow the current MFT table.
Viewing Raw Disk Data
A low level disk scanner is provided. It can be used to verify that data are really destroyed. To get information about a disk partition, for example 'C:' type:
To view a range of sectors from a partition use:
The output of this command may be very verbose, so try to limit the number of sectors your view at a time.
To view the sectors a given file occupies (NTFS volumes only) use:
| Note To raw write the disk sectors use the WipeSpace free tool. |
Usage Hints
- Add the directory where wipe.exe is found to the system path.
- Add a shortcut for wipe.exe to the Send To folder as described above.
- Add a command prompt context menu to any folder, so the cmd.exe opens to that folder path. To do this make the following changes to the registry:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\CmdPrompt] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\CmdPrompt\command] @="c:\\windows\\system32\\cmd.exe" Replace 'c:\\windows\\system32\\cmd.exe' with your system path to cmd.exe.
Type 'wipe /T' if you interrupt any of wipe operations.
- A build in CMD action can be used to temporary stop and then resume a wipe operation. Use Ctrl+S to stop an operation and then again Ctrl+S to resume it.
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