Re the "total cleanup:"

Norton Utilities (not Norton AV) used to include a "disk clean" utility. I'd expect that current versions have something like it. This utility would write to "all free space" on a disk, and then delete, so that it "overwrites" any "deleted" files that may have been there.

The "Govt" setting should write a 101010 pattern six times, followed by a 111000 111000 pattern six times, followed by a 000111 pattern six times, followed by a 010101 pattern six times - or something like that. This is what US Military standards required to "make sure erased data is not recoverable."

Twenty years ago, when we had a "snoop" in the office who liked to do "after hours" playing with our one computer - we suspected that he was "undeleting" stuff to see what we'd been doing. I made a floppy with a single file that was the max size the floppy could hold. I gave it a file extension that did not appear anywhere on the machine.

At the end of the day, I'd do a DOS copy a:\fill.gbg C:\afill.gbg, copy a:\fill.gbg c:\bfill.gbg ... etc until the drive was at least 3/4 filled, do a defrag, then Del c:\*.gbg and defrag again. With the old 20MB hard drives, I could do this in about 15 minutes.

Not too practical today, since a defrag can take 15 or 20 hours on a moderately sized disk - but if you're really serious, I'd suggest a page in Word, Select All, Paste, Paste, Paste,... to about 700 pages. That should give you at least 3MB. Select all, copy and paste a half dozen more times to get to 20 or 30 MB, save as text and then change the file extension to something that doesn't happen anywhere on the machine. (Do a DOS search for DIR *.gbg /S to make sure, using whatever file extension you picked, before you use it.) DOS copy the file a few times to fill some disk - using a different file name but keeping the dummy extension each time, defrag, delete (DEL *.gb defrag. You should be able to get it clean in not more than a few weeks - if you work at it steady.

John