How To Permanently Delete Files on Windows Vista

I find one of the biggest problems with any Windows operating system, whether it be Windows Vista, Windows XP or any other Windows OS that preceded those has one major, ultimately tedious flaw. You cannot actually totally remove files from your system - regardless of how the amount of times you have sent the file to the Recycle Bin and emptied the Recycle Bin - they’re still there! Mocking you!

You see, when you instruct Windows Vista to send delete a specific file, it will send it to the Recycle Bin whereby it will wait in limbo to either be emptied from the recycle or restored again. Despite the fact that you request the file be emptied from the Recycle Bin, Windows Vista believes it would be better all-round to simply removes the location of where your files were from it’s File Allocation Table or “FAT”, if you prefer. You don’t have a choice in the matter. Windows Vista isn’t going to budge on this one!

That’s why we need to call in outside help; Third party software. Third party software are basically unofficial programs that were created by an entirely different company to Microsoft. For instance, some of you may be familiar with a rather big computer hardware and software firm called Logitech; They designed computer equipment such as mice, keyboards, webcams and other miscellaneous PC peripherals to ease your every day computing life. These products by Logitech are designed to work on your computer which may have been made by a wide array of other companies. You may have purchased your computer from Dell, who in turn are using Microsoft Windows Vista as their operating system, who in turn might be using ATi or nVidia to produce their graphics cards.

Anyway, to cut a long story short: Third party software is software that hasn’t been written by Microsoft but will work on their operating system.

We need to get our hands on such a piece of software that will permanently erase all that rubbish on our computer without leaving any trace of it - allowing us to work in a much less cluttered environment and generally free up some extra, much needed space on our hard-drive.

A fantastic program to go about this monumental task is the much-respected Eraser from Heidi.ie. The current release for Windows Vista is v5.83 Beta and it certainly does the trick. Do not be put off by the beta part - this product has proven to me that it is entirely stable and more than capable of removing all of the useless junk from my Dell Inspiron 1520 notebook, no problem.

I wholeheartedly recommend you give Eraser a try and rid you system of all those unnecessary files. Good luck!