CBT Bazar

After using your Windows computer for a few years, installing and uninstalling software, you’re bound to find a lot of empty directories. Hunting them down and deleting each individually can be very annoying. Here we look at a free utility that will find empty folders for you and delete them all in one shot.

Here we take a look at the Admin Edition which forces you to start it as Administrator every time if you haven’t disabled UAC. There’s also the Normal Edition – (Recommended for most users) that works without Admin rights but can’t clean some directories. Both are free and work virtually the same.

1. Install the Remove Empty Directories program by accepting the wizard defaults.

2. When installation is complete, you can run the utility right away.

3. The Scan tab will be open by default, now select a directory, then click the Scan folders button.

4. Then wait while it scans your drive for empty folders. The amount of time it takes will depend on the amount of data you have on your drive.

5. When the scan completes, you’ll be shown the number of empty and the amount of time it took…in this instance it was less than a minute. The results are shown in a hierarchical tree and are color coded based on their description.

6. After the initial scan, I didn’t remove anything…but went into the settings where you have more control over how the scans take place.

7. After running a scan again, it took a fraction of the time, and there were less empty directories found because I selected to ignore hidden folders.

8. Before deleting the folders, you’ll probably want to go through the results to see what it’s going to delete. Then you can right-click on the empty directories and open them in Explorer, scan only that directory, protect or unprotect it and more.

Of course if you open a folder that it finds it should be empty.

9. When you’re ready, click the Delete Folders button and wait for the process to complete. Here you can see a few directories failed to delete because they’re protected by the file system…for more information you can pull up the Log which is a text based file.

10. The empty folders are put into the Recycle Bin, just empty it to get rid of them.

If you’re a fan of knowing what’s in your folder tree and hate programs that leave empty folders cluttering up your system after they’re uninstalled, you might want to give Remove Empty Directories a try.

When you delete a file in Windows, you only remove bits of information from the file, so it appears deleted in the operating system. Easily available file recovery software can be used to retrieve the deleted files.

To securely delete a file, you must use a program that “shreds” the file. We have previously written about different methods for securely deleting files in Windows (see our posts, Securely Delete Files Using the Context Menu in Windows and Securely delete files from your hard disk using Cipher) and even how to do it in Linux (see our post, Securely Delete Files in Linux).

We have found another free tool, called File Shredder, that securely deletes files from your Windows system by rewriting the files with a random series of binary data multiple times. This overwrites the actual contents of each file, making recovery of the files “mostly theoretical,” as the website says.

In this two-part series of posts, we show you how to securely delete files using File Shredder and using the context menu options in Windows Explorer provided by File Shredder. We also show you how to use File Shredder to securely wipe the free space on your hard drive, so files deleted using non-secure methods are irretrievable.

Download File Shredder from

http://www.fileshredder.org/.

Install File Shredder

To install File Shredder, double-click on the .exe file you downloaded.

If the User Account Control dialog box displays, click Yes to continue.

NOTE: You may not see this dialog box, depending on your User Account Control settings. See our post, Windows 7 – How to configure UAC (User Account Control), for more information.

The Welcome screen on the setup wizard displays. Click Next.

Read through the License Agreement and select the I accept the agreement radio button. Click Next.

The Select Destination Location screen displays. If you want to install File Shredder to a different location other than the default location listed in the edit box, use the Browse button to select another location. We accepted the default location. Click Next to continue.

The Select Start Menu Folder screen displays. If you want to add the shortcuts for File Shredder to a different Start menu folder than the default listed in the edit box, use the Browse button. We accepted the default Start menu folder. Click Next to continue.

On the Select Additional Tasks screen, you can select the Create a desktop icon check box to put a shortcut to File Shredder on the desktop and the Create a Quick Launch icon check box to put a shortcut in the Quick Launch bar. These options are not selected by default. Click Next.

The Ready to Install screen displays with a summary of the settings you selected. If you want to change any of the settings, use the Back button. Otherwise, click Install to continue with the installation.

Once the installation is done, the Completing the File Shredder Setup Wizard screen displays. If you want File Shredder to start as soon as you close the setup wizard, select the Launch File Shredder check box so there is a check mark in it. It should be selected by default. Click Finish to close the setup wizard.

Select Files to Shred in File Shredder

If you selected the Launch File Shredder check box before closing the Setup Wizard, File Shredder should automatically open. If not, double-click the shortcut on the desktop (if you chose to create one there) or open File Shredder from the Start menu.

To add a file or multiple files to be shredded, click the Add File(s) link under File Shredder in the left pane.

The Open dialog box displays. Navigate to the location of the file(s) you want to shred. Select the file(s) to be shredded and click Open.

NOTE: When selecting multiple files, the files all have to be in the same folder to select them. Use the Shift and Ctrl keys to select multiple files in a folder, just like you would in Windows Explorer. If you want to select files from different folders, select files from one folder, click Open, and then click the Add File(s) link again to access the Open dialog box again to select files from a different location.

The file is added to the list on the right in File Shredder. You can also add files using the context menu in the right pane in File Shredder. The context menu also allows you to remove the selected file or all files. If you want to find out in which folder the selected file is located, select the file, right-click on it and select the Locate in Explorer option from the popup context menu.

Change Settings in File Shredder

Before you shred the file, click the Shredder Settings link to view the settings you can change within File Shredder.

The Settings dialog box displays with the Program Settings tab active. If you want to be able to shred files using the context menu in Windows Explorer, select the Enable Shell Integration (Right Click) check box. We will show you how to use that feature later in this post.

The Confirmations box contains check boxes that allow you to turn on and off confirmation dialog boxes that display when performing specific actions using File Shredder.

Click the Algorithms tab to select the Default secure algorithm you want to use from the drop-down list. The options range from a Simple One Pass algorithm (the files are rewritten with a random series of binary data one time) to the Department of Defense standard (DoD 5220-22.M), which makes 7 passes over the files being shredded. You can also select the most secure Guttman algorithm, which rewrites the files with binary data 35 times.

Click the Visual Options tab to specify whether to save some space on the File Shredder interface by hiding the top pane (the Visible check box in the Show Top Title box) and whether to run File Shredder maximized when the program starts (the Run Maximized check box in the Program start box). Click OK when you are finished selecting your desired settings on the three tabs.

Shred Selected Files

To shred the files you added to File Shredder, click the Shred Files Now button.

NOTE: All files added to the list in File Shredder will be shredded. You cannot select certain files in the list to be shredded. If there is a file or more than one file in the list that you don’t want shredded yet, use the Remove links in the left pane or the Remove options on the context menu discussed earlier to remove the file(s) from the list.

A Confirm dialog box displays to make sure you want to shred the selected file(s). Click OK to shred the file(s).

NOTE: Remember, the files you shred will be permanently deleted and will not be recoverable.

Close File Shredder

To close File Shredder, click the Exit button.

NOTE: You can also click the X button in the upper, right corner of the File Shredder window to close the program.

Wrap Up

This was the first post in a two-part series about using File Shredder to securely delete files and securely wipe the free space on your hard drive(s).

In this post, we covered installing File Shredder, shredding files in File Shredder, and changing settings in File Shredder.

Stay tuned for Part II, where we will cover shredding files using the context menu in Windows Explorer and securely wiping the free space on your hard drive(s).

In Ubuntu, when your computer has been idle for long enough so that the screensaver kicks in, you’ll see upon jiggling the mouse that a password screen pops up. You’ll be unable to access your desktop until correctly verifying your password.

This is a handy security feature for those of us in job environments with unsecured workspaces. It’s not so handy, however, for those times at home when other things distracted you from your computer and you returned only to have to log in again.

Thankfully, this is a feature that can be turned off quite easily. In fact, there are three ways to turn off this feature: the first from the Configuration Editor, the second using the Terminal, and the third from the Screensaver preference pane itself.

Using the Screensaver Preference Pane

This is the simplest, and most user-friendly way of turning off the screensaver lock. To access the screensaver preference pane, click the System menu (assuming you are still using the Ubuntu-default Menu Bar. Once you have clicked the System menu, choose Preferences, as shown below.

If you are using the optional Main Menu, which combines the Menu Bar into a single menu, then you’ll find the screensaver preference pane by clicking the icon, moving down to System, and choosing Preferences, as in this screenshot.

Regardless of how you get to the Preferences area, you’ll want to then choose Screensaver.

Clicking this will bring up the screensaver preferences window, from which you can change screensavers, set the standard idle time that has to pass before the screensaver kicks in, turn off the screensaver altogether or, and this is why we’re here, turn off the option to lock the screen when the screensaver activates.

Now that we’re here, the only thing to do is un-tick the checkbox beside the last option, as illustrated below:

And that’s all for this method. Once the checkbox is un-ticked, the screensaver will continue to work as per your settings, but you won’t have to log into your account every time you return to your computer and find the screensaver running.

Using the Configuration Editor

The configuration editor is – at least by default in Ubuntu – a hidden application that gives the user access to hundreds of configuration options, including the screensaver lock option we’re looking to change. To access the configuration editor, open the Run Dialog by hitting Alt-F2. A small window should appear.

To start the configuration editor, simply type the following (as shown above):

gconf-editor

When the configuration editor appears, double click apps in the left sidebar (#1 in the image below), then scroll down to gnome-screensaver and click it (#2 in the image below). In the content area on the right, a series of options should appear. The one we’re looking for is lock_enabled (#3 in the image below).

In order to turn off the screensaver lock, all we need to do is un-tick the checkbox, so that it looks like this:

Just as when we used the Screensaver preference pane, once we have un-ticked the checkbox, the screensaver will no longer ask us for our password.

Using the Terminal

The Terminal method is probably the most complex method, in that knowledge of the gconf syntax is required, while at the same time being the quickest, with only two steps.

The first step is to open the Terminal. The Terminal can be found in the Applications menu in the Accessories section.

Note: in the example image above, the terminal is called Gnome Terminal. In most setups, it is likely identified as simply Terminal.

Once you have opened the Terminal, simply type or paste in the following (for clarification, the final part of the following command is a zero, and not a letter):

gconftool-2 –type bool –set /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_enabled 0

Hit enter, and you should be all set. As you can see from the screenshot below, there will be no confirmation that the command has actually worked.

So you understand exactly what you typed, here is what the sections of the command actually do. The first part: “gconftool-2” calls up the command line gconf editor (called gconftool-2 or sometimes simply gconftool). Next is “–type bool” which tells gconftool-2 that the following command will have a Boolean response (either on or off, 1 for “on” and 0 for “off”).

The final part, “–set /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_enabled 0” is telling gconfeditor-2 where to find the command: in the apps folder, then the gnome-screensaver settings, and finally the lock_enabled option, which we are setting to off, with the “0” at the end of the command.

You may notice the path (apps -> gnome-screensaver -> lock_enabled) is identical to the path we took in the GUI Configuration Editor. This has the advantage of being a single command, if a bit geeky and definitely not something most people will remember off the top of their heads.

For confirmation that this command worked, double-check by opening either the Screensaver preferences or the Configuration Editor as shown earlier and if everything was done correctly, the checkbox should be un-ticked, just the way we wanted. So that’s it. Three ways, each one effective. One very geeky, one slightly geeky, and one for parents and grandparents everywhere!