23rd March 2001

You're the only one who has access to your computer. Right? Well, in theory. Anyone can inadvertently leave an electronic paper trail, ya know. Pages aren't always bound in books; they can also be found on hard drive(s). These paging files (also known as swap files) may contain sensitive information. Running Windows 2000 on NTFS is one way to make sure your data is secure, but don't forget to clear that page file periodically. With this W2k registry tweak, you can wipe it with zeros before every reboot. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management. Now, in the right-hand pane, add a new REG_DWORD value named: "ClearPageFileAtShutdown" (sans quotes). You may already have this value; its default property is 0. Switch that number to 1 and inactive pages (in pagefile.sys) will be overwritten. will be filled with zeros. Unfortunately, this won't kill everything in there. Some sections of the file may still be in use when Windows is shutting down. To edit your paging file options, right-click on the "My Computer" icon, flip to the "Advanced" tab, press the "Performance "Options and subsequent "Change" buttons, then tweak away.