----------------------------------------------------------------
Eraser 5.3 (Jan 7th 2002)
----------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS
1. LEGAL
   1.1. Copyright
   1.2. License agreement and Disclaimer
   1.3. Digital signature
2. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
   2.1. Libraries
3. HOW TO INSTALL & UNINSTALL
   3.1. Before installing
   3.2. Installing
   3.3. Help?
   3.4. Uninstalling
4. DESCRIPTION
5. AUTHOR
   5.1. Web site

----------------------------------------------------------------
1. LEGAL

   1.1. Copyright

        Eraser Copyright © 1997-2002 by Sami Tolvanen. All
        rights reserved.

        By using this software you accept all the terms and
        conditions of the license agreement and disclaimer
        below.

        All registered and unregistered trademarks mentioned in
        this document are the property of their respective
        holders.

   1.2. License agreement and Disclaimer

        This program is free software; you can redistribute it
        and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
        Public License as published by the Free Software
        Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
        option) any later version.

	This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
	useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
	implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
	PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
	for more details.

        You should have received a copy of the GNU General
        Public License along with this program; if not, write to
        the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place -
        Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

   1.3. Digital signature

        The setup program is signed with Pretty Good Privacy
        (PGP) (public key available at web site) for verifying
        the authenticity. The signature file should be included
        with the archive.

        If you did not receive a separate digital signature file
        with this archive, download the official binary
        distribution at the home page (see section 5.1).

----------------------------------------------------------------
2. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

   This version of Eraser runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0,
   2000, XP and later.

   2.1. Windows Common Control Library (COMCTL32.DLL)

        You must have version 4.72 or later version of the
        Windows Common Control Library in order to use Eraser.

        If you are using Windows 95 or NT and have not installed
        Internet Explorer 4.01 or later, you must download an
        update at:

        http://www.tolvanen.com/common/

        Later versions of Windows come with the updated library.

----------------------------------------------------------------
3. HOW TO INSTALL & UNINSTALL

   3.1. Before installing

        Be sure to uninstall any previous version of Eraser
        before installing. Also make sure you have the required
        libraries installed before running setup (see section
        2.1).

        If the setup program asks you to reboot Windows after
        installation, you must do that before running Eraser.

   3.2. Installing

        SETUP.EXE is a self-extracting executable containing the
        program files.

        Run SETUP.EXE to install Eraser. The setup program will
        extract the files and copy them to a desired location.

   3.3. Help?

        After installing, you can open the help file (in the
        Eraser directory) by double-clicking the ERASER.HLP
        file.

        You can also get answers to some frequently asked
        questions and read a step-by-step installation
        instructions at Eraser home page (see section 5.1).

   3.4. Uninstalling

        You can uninstall Eraser normally via Control Panel,
        Add/Remove Programs. You should not remove the files
        manually because the settings in the registry would not
        be removed.

----------------------------------------------------------------
4. DESCRIPTION

   Eraser is an advanced security tool, which allows you to
   completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by
   overwriting it several times with carefully selected
   patterns.

   You can drag and drop files and folders to the on-demand
   eraser, use the convenient Explorer shell extension or use
   the integrated scheduler to program overwriting of unused
   disk space or, for example, browser cache files to happen
   regularly, at night, during your lunch break, at weekends or
   whenever you like.

   The patterns used for overwriting are based on Peter
   Gutmann's paper "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and
   Solid-State Memory" and they are selected to effectively
   remove the magnetic remnants from the hard disk making it
   impossible to recover the data.

   Other methods include the one defined in the National
   Industrial Security Program Operating Manual of the US
   Department of Defense and overwriting with pseudo-random data
   up to one hundred times.

----------------------------------------------------------------
5. AUTHOR

   Sami Tolvanen, the author of this software is a student in
   university of technology in Finland. For more information,
   visit his home page at http://www.tolvanen.com/sami/.

   5.1. Web site

        You can download the latest version of Eraser and the
        required libraries at Eraser home page.

        http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/

----------------------------------------------------------------