User manual ACRONIS POWER UTILITIES

Acronis PowerUtilities User's Guide Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2004 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2004. All rights reserved. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Windows and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners. Distribution of substantively modified versions of this document is prohibited without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Distribution of the work or derivative work in any standard (paper) book form for commercial purposes is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder. DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED «AS IS» AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED, EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT THAT SUCH DISCLAIMERS ARE HELD TO BE LEGALLY INVALID. Table of Contents CHAPTER 1. ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES ....................................................... 5 1.1 ABOUT ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES................................................. 5 1.2 ABOUT THE ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES USER'S GUIDE ................. 6 1.3 SOFTWARE USAGE CONDITIONS ..................................................... 7 1.4 TECHNICAL SUPPORT ...................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 2. INSTALLING AND STARTING TO WORK WITH ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES ................................................................................................ 8 2.1 ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES SYSTEM PACKAGE............................... 8 2.2 HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS ................................ 8 2.3 INSTALLING ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES COMPONENTS ................. 8 2.4 RECOVERING ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES COMPONENTS................ 8 2.5 REMOVING ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES COMPONENTS ................... 9 2.6 ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES SUITE INTERFACE................................ 9 2.7 RUNNING A SUITE COMPONENT ...................................................... 9 CHAPTER 3. CLEANING USER ACTIVITY TRACES FROM A COMPUTER..... 10 3.1 SOFTWARE LOGICAL ORGANIZATION: SECTIONS ......................... 10 3.1.1 COMPLEX PC CLEAN-UP...........................................................................11 3.1.2 CLEANING SEPARATE SYSTEM COMPONENTS...........................................11 3.2 3.3 EXECUTING PC CLEAN-UP MANUALLY ........................................ 12 CLEAN-UP SETTINGS ..................................................................... 12 3.3.1 CLEAN-UP SETTINGS.................................................................................12 3.3.2 CLEAN-UP SETTINGS EDITOR....................................................................12 3.3.3 SETTING PC COMPONENT CLEAN-UP WITH THE EDITOR...........................12 3.4 SEPARATE COMPONENTS CLEAN-UP SETTINGS ............................ 14 3.4.1 CLEAN-UP SETTINGS OF COMPONENTS RELATED TO WORKING ON THE INTERNET .................................................................................................................14 3.4.2 SYSTEM COMPONENT CLEAN-UP SETTINGS..............................................16 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 EXECUTING SCHEDULED PC CLEAN-UP........................................ 20 RENAMING CLEAN-UP VARIANTS ................................................. 22 DATA CLEAN-UP ALGORITHMS..................................................... 22 COMPLEX PC CLEAN-UP ............................................................... 23 3.5.1 INVOKING THE SCHEDULER.........................................................................21 3.5.2 SCHEDULER SETTINGS ..............................................................................21 3.8.1 ENTIRE PC CLEAN-UP...............................................................................23 3.8.2 SYSTEM CLEAN-UP ...................................................................................24 3.8.3 INTERNET CLEAN-UP ................................................................................24 3.9 A FAST CLEANUP OF SEPARATE SYSTEM COMPONENTS .............. 25 CHAPTER 4. MIGRATING DATA TO A NEW HARD DISK .............................. 26 4.1 PREPARING FOR MIGRATION ......................................................... 26 4.2 HARD DISK PARTITIONS AND FILE SYSTEMS................................ 26 4.3 INSTALLING A HARD DISK ON YOUR COMPUTER ......................... 27 4.4 BIOS SET-UP ................................................................................. 27 4.5 STARTING WORK WITH ACRONIS MIGRATEEASY ........................ 28 4.6 MIGRATION SCENARIOS ................................................................ 29 4.6.1 AUTO UPGRADE........................................................................................29 4.6.2 MANUAL UPGRADE ..................................................................................29 4.7 4.8 AUTO UPGRADE ............................................................................ 30 SAFETY .......................................................................................... 34 Acronis PowerUtilities 3 4.9 MANUAL UPGRADE ....................................................................... 35 CHAPTER 5. HARD DISK ERROR CORRECTION ........................................... 36 5.1 BEGINNING TO WORK WITH THE PROGRAM ACRONIS DISKEDITOR36 5.2 MAIN WINDOW OF THE PROGRAM ................................................ 37 5.3 WORKING IN MULT-IWINDOWS MODE.......................................... 38 5.4 EDIT HARD DISKS.......................................................................... 40 5.5 WRITE BLOCK TO A FILE AND READ FROM A FILE........................ 42 5.6 VIEW.............................................................................................. 43 5.7 SEARCH ......................................................................................... 44 5.8 WORKING WITH DIFFERENT ENCODINGS ...................................... 45 5.9 OTHER ACRONIS DISKEDITOR CAPABILITIES ............................... 46 CHAPTER 6. DISK DATA WIPING .................................................................. 47 6.1 CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION ON HARD DISKS: STORAGE AND ACCESS ....................................................................................................... 47 6.1.1 CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: DESTRUCTION..........................................47 6.1.2 DATA DELETION BY MEANS OF AN OPERATING SYSTEMS........................48 6.1.3 GUARANTEED DESTRUCTION OF CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: STANDARDS .................................................................................................................49 6.2 WORKING WITH ACRONIS DRIVECLEANSER SOFTWARE.............. 50 6.2.1 RESULTS OF THE WIPING SCRIPT EXECUTION...........................................55 6.3 CREATING CUSTOM ALGORITHMS ................................................ 56 APPENDIX A. HARD DISK WIPING ALGORITHMS.......................................... 57 A.1 INFORMATION WIPING ALGORITHMS FUNCTIONING PRINCIPLES. 57 A.2 ALGORITHMS USED BY ACRONIS PRIVACYEXPERT AND DRIVECLEANSER ..................................................................................... 58 4 Table of Contents Chapter 1. Acronis PowerUtilities 1.1 About Acronis PowerUtilities Acronis PowerUtilities, the long-anticipated utilities suite from the technology leader Acronis, includes four of the most popular system utilities available in one box: · · · · Acronis PrivacyExpert, the powerful privacy utility computing and surfing history completely private. that keeps Acronis MigrateEasy, the preeminent hard disk drive migration tool available today. Acronis DiskEditor, the technically advanced tool designed to edit your hard disk and its partition data manually. Acronis DriveCleanser, the proven solution to securely obliterate hard disks clean. Compute and Surf Without a Trace! Acronis PrivacyExpert provides you with complete confidentiality while working with a stand-alone or networked personal computer (PC). The confidentiality that Acronis PrivacyExpert delivers allows you to clean-up trace data and Windows by removing any evidence of your work or Internet activities. Unlike other software Acronis PrivacyExpert also increases PC performance by cleaning out temporary files. Acronis PrivacyExpert is PC performance improvement as a result of hard disk cleanup from numerous temporary files. Upgrade Your Hard Disk Drive in Minutes! It's finally time ­ you've put it off as long as possible, but it's now time to upgrade to a new larger hard disk drive. And if you're like most, you're not excited. You think you're in for a large project spanning several days of tedious work. Luckily for you, there's Acronis MigrateEasy, the award-winning solution that migrates all your computer data and system files to a new hard disk drive in minutes, while keeping all operating systems and applications fully functional. Why take days upgrading, when you can use Acronis MigrateEasy and be finished in minutes? With Acronis MigrateEasy, you don't have to be a computer scientist to upgrade to a new hard disk drive. Simply make a few choices when prompted, and Acronis MigrateEasy will take care of everything Acronis PowerUtilities 5 automatically. It will even show you a preview of the migration can be completely assured of file and system transfer. Within minutes, your data, including applications and operating systems, will be safely on your new large hard disk drive and ready to go! Hard Disk Problem? Not Any More Quite often problems can arise with hard disk drives that cannot be solved without a technically advanced disk editor. Such problems include: back-up, copying, and/or recover important data areas of a hard drive; search and/or extraction of information that was removed by accident or lost due to different soft- and hardware failures or virus attack. Acronis DiskEditor, with booting up from a diskette, works even if your operating system does not. Securely Obliterate Your Hard Disks Getting rid of an old PC, upgrading to a new hard drive, returning a leased computer, or redeploying a PC within your company? It is truly imperative to completely destroy all data from the old hard disk. Your confidential data should not only be safeguarded according to the strict rules, but it should also be reliably and completely destroyed when needed. You think you have deleted all the financial, corporate, and personal files, and even formatted and deleted hard disk partitions ­ but are they really gone from the drive? The answer is NO! Acronis DriveCleanser guarantees the complete destruction of data on selected partitions and/or entire disks with extremely simple Windows XPstyle interface and straight-forward actions. 1.2 About the Acronis PowerUtilities User's Guide This Guide briefly describes the main features of Acronis PowerUtilities suite components, including the following chapters: · Chapter 2 «Installing and Starting to Work with Acronis PowerUtilities» - installing, recovering and removing various suite components; Chapter 3 «Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer» working with Acronis PrivacyExpert: setting up and executing variants of complex PC and system cleanup; Chapter 4 «Migrating Data to a New Hard Disk» - working with Acronis MigrateEasy: preparing a hard disk for installation and automatic migration of the complete data set, including operating system, applications, documents, etc.; Chapter 5 «Hard Disk Error Correction» - working with Acronis DiskEditor: low-level access to hard disk sectors, searching disk for · · · 6 Chapter 1 : Acronis PowerUtilities data, operating with sector byte blocks, browsing and editing the Master Boot Record and boot sectors, File Allocation Table; · Chapter 6 «Disk Data Wiping» - working with Acronis DriveCleanser: guaranteed wiping of confidential data on an obsolete or unused disk, data wiping algorithms; Appendix A. «Hard Disk Wiping Algorithms» - the necessity of strict hard disk data wiping algorithms and the detailed description of algorithms integrated into Acronis PrivacyExpert and Acronis DriveCleanser. · 1.3 Software Usage Conditions The conditions of Acronis PowerUtilities software usage are described in the «License agreement», included in this package. The supplied registration card is the confirmation of your legal purchase and usage of Acronis PowerUtilities software. Each registration card has its own unique registration number. Based on current legislation the «License agreement» is considered a contract between a user and a software manufacturer. This contract has the legal effect and its violation may entail a court examination. Illegal use and distribution of software will be prosecuted. 1.4 Technical Support Users of legally purchased and registered copies of Acronis PowerUtilities receive free technical support from the Acronis Inc. In case you have problems with installation or using the software, that cannot be solved with this guide or readme, please e-mail the technical support. You will also need to send us you the registration number for Acronis PowerUtilities. This number is written on a registration card, supplied with this package. Support URL: http://www.acronis.com/support/ E-mail: support@acronis.com Acronis PowerUtilities 7 Chapter 2. Installing and Starting to Work with Acronis PowerUtilities 2.1 Acronis PowerUtilities System Package Acronis PowerUtilities system package includes: · · · · · an installation disc, this guide, license agreement, registration card, advertising materials. 2.2 Hardware and Software Requirements To take a full advantage of Acronis PowerUtilities one should have: · · · · · a PC-compatible computer with a Pentium CPU or similar, 32 MB RAM, VGA monitor, a mouse (recommended), free disk space for archive files. 2.3 Installing Acronis PowerUtilities Components To install Acronis PowerUtilities suite component, please, insert the CD-ROM into the drive, select the needed component and run the installer. Please, carefully follow all the instructions. Having answered Acronis PowerUtilities component installation wizard questions, you will be prompted to create a bootable CD-R/W or diskettes (if you purchased Acronis PowerUtilities on a bootable CD, you can skip this step). 2.4 Recovering Acronis PowerUtilities Components If a component of Acronis PowerUtilities failed to install or run, please, execute the installation program again. The software will determine that the 8 Chapter 2 : Installing and Starting to Work with Acronis PowerUtilities component has already been installed to your PC and prompt you to recover (update) or completely remove it from the disk. In the component installation wizard select Recover/update Acronis and click Next. All necessary files will be copied to your hard disk again to properly restore software. 2.5 Removing Acronis PowerUtilities Components To remove a component select Acronis Remove from the Programs menu. You will see a prompt to confirm removal of the software from your PC hard disk. Click Yes to confirm removal. The selected component of Acronis PowerUtilities suite will be completely removed from the PC hard disk. 2.6 Acronis PowerUtilities Suite Interface The user interface of Acronis PowerUtilities suite features standard Windows graphical user interface (GUI) elements. Please pay close attention to setting and executing clean-up variants. 2.7 Running a Suite Component To run a suite component select Programs Acronis the Start menu. For example, select Programs PrivacyExpert to run Acronis PrivacyExpert. from Acronis Acronis In some cases you will be prompted to load a component from a bootable diskette or CD-R/W, that was created during the component installation. Acronis PowerUtilities 9 Chapter 3. Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer Clean-up of user PC activity traces is performed by Acronis PrivacyExpert, a part of Acronis PowerUtilities suite. Acronis PrivacyExpert is controlled from the main window. It is shown on the screen after selecting Acronis PrivacyExpert PrivacyExpert from the Programs menu. The Acronis PrivacyExpert main window is a Windows dialog box split into two parts: · · The right part contains grouped lists of main PC cleanup variants user may execute with Acronis PrivacyExpert; The left part of the window, or sidebar, is an element, that was introduced in the Windows XP. It contains grouped actions that can be performed on objects in the right part of the window. Main window Acronis PrivacyExpert Clean-up variants are executed, set, scheduled, and renamed with the help of corresponding items of the main menu, toolbar, sidebar, and context menus. 3.1 Software Logical Organization: Sections Logically Acronis PrivacyExpert consists of several parts, each enabling the user to perform (1) specific variants of complex PC clean-up from PC activity evidence or (2) clean-up separate system components. 10 Chapter 3 : Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer 3.1.1 Complex PC Clean-up In the One Click Clean-up section, shown by default in the right part of the Acronis PrivacyExpert main window, the user has access to icons of three pre-defined complex PC clean-up. If you need to perform: 1. entire PC clean-up, including Windows system section and sections related to working on the Internet, execute Entire PC Clean-up; 2. clean-up of sections related to working on the Internet only, execute Internet Clean-up; 3. Windows system section and user files/folders cleanup, execute System Cleanup. Attention! Described clean-up variants are fully set-up by default and ready for immediate work once Acronis PrivacyExpert is installed. They were specifically created for the majority of users to take advantage of them without understanding all the complex setting details. Any of these variants can be executed by a click of the mouse! 3.1.2 Cleaning Separate System Components Internet Components and System Components sections allow you to perform a quick clean-up of separate system components once you have taken specific actions on your PC. For example, you need to clean-up the browser cache from garbage after visiting a dubious content site and remove its URL from the list of visited sites, etc. This will not take much time compare to a full, complex clean-up. If you need to perform: 1. a quick clean-up of only separate components of Windows system sections and separate user files/folders, execute one of the clean-up variants from the Components section; 2. a quick clean-up of only separate Windows components, related to working on the Internet, execute a variant from the Internet Components section. Separate components clean-up takes less time than complex cleanup of entire Windows sections. All PC clean-up variants as well as separate components cleanup are executed manually or by schedule and are set universally (see 3.2 «Executing PC Clean-up Manually», 3.5 «Executing Scheduled PC Clean-up», 3.3 «Clean-up Settings») and differ only by the number of settings.. Acronis PowerUtilities 11 3.2 Executing PC Clean-up Manually There are three ways of manually executing complex PC and component clean-up. PC or separate component clean-up, previously selected from the right part of the Acronis PrivacyExpert main window, can be executed by: 1. mouse-clicking Start Now! in the Acronis PrivacyExpert main window sidebar; 2. selecting Clean-up Start Now! from the main menu; 3. selecting Start Now! from the task context menu. If you are unable to see the clean-up variant or components to clean in the workspace, please scroll down to make it visible. 3.3 3.3.1 Clean-up Settings Clean-up Settings By changing clean-up settings, you can set Acronis PrivacyExpert for your personal needs. For example: you can select an algorithm of guaranteed data destruction that suits you by speed and reliability, enter the type of temporary files to clean, directly select browser used, disable separate component clean-up, etc. This will enable Acronis PrivacyExpert to clean your PC at maximum speed and performance. Settings are described below. 3.3.2 Clean-up Settings Editor Having selected a clean-up variant by mouse-clicking from the right part of the Acronis PrivacyExpert main window, and then Properties from the sidebar Edit list, you invoke the settings editor. You can also do this by selecting a clean-up variant and Clean-up Properties from the main menu. Finally, the settings editor can be invoked from the context menu of a clean-up variant by selecting Properties. 3.3.3 Setting PC Component Clean-up with the Editor Below you can see the opened settings editor featuring two groups of components to clean that belong to the Entire PC Clean-up. There are two of such groups: · Internet Clean-up ­ this group includes clean-up of sections related to working in the Internet, 12 Chapter 3 : Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer · System Clean-up ­ this group includes Windows system section and user files/folders clean-up. If you need to set up component clean-up: 1. select the component from the left part of the editor and check the Enable box; The description of a component to clean 2. set component clean-up; for this consecutively select each component clean-up setting or set-up as necessary (selecting/entering clean-up algorithm, file type, Internet browser, etc.); «Files» setting 3. to save your settings click Apply. To discard changes click Cancel. Acronis PowerUtilities 13 If you need to restore Acronis PrivacyExpert default clean-up settings: 1. select the component tree root ­ Settings; 2. in the right part of the editor click Restore Defaults . Restoring Acronis PrivacyExpert default settings 3.4 Separate Components Clean-up Settings Having selected a specific component to clean from the editor, you open the list of its clean-up settings. Each component to clean has several settings in Acronis PrivacyExpert (from 1 to 3 depending on a component). Below are common settings for a number of components. 3.4.1 Clean-up Settings of Components Related to Working on the Internet «Internet Browsers» and «Address» settings are common for components related to working on the Internet. «Internet Browsers» Setting Acronis PrivacyExpert automatically finds all supported browsers installed on your PC and by default cleans structures of all browsers related to working in the Internet. 14 Chapter 3 : Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer If you have Internet Explorer installed, the structures cleaned belong to the currently logged on user. «Internet Browsers» setting Netscape Navigator and Mozilla support the so-called personal profiles. Without additional settings Acronis PrivacyExpert cleans either the «default profile» (if it is the only one existing), or the profile of a currently logged on user. If you need to clean-up only one browser: 1. Set the checkbox near its name only (for example, Internet Explorer), unchecking all other boxes; 2. If you use a version of Netscape Navigator (or Mozilla), you should additionally select a personal profile (by clicking Profiles... link). «Address» Setting The «Address» setting is meant for cleaning up Internet cache and the last visited pages list. («Address» setting has only two system components to clean: Internet Cache, Last Visited Pages.) You can also enter any full or partial Internet addresses separated by a semicolon as a value of the «Address» setting, for example: *worldsoccer.com; *formula1.com; and so on. All files downloaded from sites fully or partially corresponding to at least one of the addresses entered will be removed. Attention! The length of a search string with full or partial Internet addresses are almost infinite! So you may enter any number of addresses like *worldsoccer.com or *formula1.com separated by semicolon. Acronis PowerUtilities 15 If you need to: 1. clean-up Internet cache (last visited pages list) from all files (lists, elements), downloaded from specific Internet address (site), enter addresses or their parts separated by semicolon, for example like: *cnn*;*formula1* As a result all files downloaded from www.cnn.com, www.formula1.com will be deleted. 2. clean-up Internet cache from only specific file types downloaded from specific Internet address (site), enter addresses separated by semicolon, for example like: *cnn*.jpg;*cnn*.gif;*formula1*.jpg;*formula1*.gif As a result only *.jpg, *.gif files will be deleted, and, for example, *.html files will remain in cache. Entering the Internet addresses list, you can browse files (visited pages) selected according to the list. To do this click Show URLs . You will see the window with selected addresses. They will be deleted during at the selected component clean-up. 3.4.2 System Component Clean-up Settings «Data Destruction Algorithm» and «Files» settings are common for system component cleanup. «Data destruction algorithm» Setting Having selected «Data Destruction Algorithm» setting you can change the security level provided by PC clean-up and clean-up speed. For detailed information about data destruction algorithms see 3.7 «Data Clean-up Algorithms» and Appendix A. «Hard Disk Wiping Algorithms». The highest level security algorithms are always very slow, and vice versa, the quickest algorithms provide less reliability and security. 16 Chapter 3 : Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer Having mouse-clicked a setting name, you will see its available element in the right part of the editor ­ the selection of data destruction algorithms. Selecting a data destruction algorithm Mouse-clicking the drop-down list in the right part of the editor, you will see all data destruction algorithms available in Acronis PrivacyExpert. If you need to ensure: 1. the top security for wiping PC activity evidence, select Peter Gutmann's algorithm (35 data destruction cycles), but remember that it's very slow; 2. the medium level of security at an average speed of clean-up, select VSITR or Bruce Schneier's algorithm (7 data destruction cycles); 3. the fast PC clean-up, with less security in mind, select any of 1-3-pass algorithms (see A.2 «Algorithms Used by Acronis PrivacyExpert and »). «Files» Setting The «Files» setting is meant to provide temporary file names to clean with Acronis PrivacyExpert (from Windows Recycle Bin and from system and user folders) and is actually a search string. In the Windows operating system, a search string might represent a full or partial file name. A search string may contain any alphanumeric symbols, including comma, * and ? symbols, and can have values similar to the following : · · *.* ­ to delete all files from the Recycle Bin ­ with any file names and extensions; *.doc ­ to delete files with specific extension ­ Microsoft document files in this case; Acronis PowerUtilities 17 · · read*.* ­ to delete all files with any extensions, and names beginning with «read»; read?.* ­ to delete all files having 5-letter names and any extensions, names beginning with «read», the fifth letter is random. For example, the last search string will result in removal of read1.txt, ready.doc files, but readyness.txt will remain since it has a longer pre-fix name (excluding the extension). You can enter several different search strings separated by semicolon, for example: *.bak; *.tmp; *.~~~; and so on. All files with names corresponding to at least one of the search strings will be deleted. Attention! The length of a search string with full or partial names is almost infinite! You may enter any number of filenames or their parts like *.tmp, read?.* separated by semicolon. The «Files» setting has four system components to clean: Recycle Bin, Temporary Files, Custom Folders/Files, and Find Files List. «Files» setting 18 Chapter 3 : Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer If you need to: 1. delete only specific file types from the Recycle Bin (system or user folder), enter filenames separated by semicolon, for example, as follows: *.jpg; *.gif; 2. delete only specific filenames from the Recycle Bin (system or user folder), enter names, for example, as follows: read*.txt. This will result in removal of read!.txt, readme.txt, read1.txt, etc. files, while read.doc, readme.doc, etc. will remain. 3. delete only specific length filenames from the Recycle Bin (system or user folder), enter filename, for example, as follows: read?.txt. As a result files read!.txt, read1.txt, read2.txt, etc. will be deleted, while read.doc, readme.doc, etc. will remain. By entering filenames, you can browse the files selected by Acronis PrivacyExpert. To do this click Show Files. You will see a window containing selected files. These files are set for destruction when you invoke the clean-up. «Computers» Setting The «Computers» setting is meant to clean-up the registry from search strings for finding computers in the local network. These strings keep information on what interested you in the network. So they should also be deleted to maintain full confidentiality. «Computers» setting is the same as «Files». «Computers» setting is a string that can contain any number of full or partial computer names separated by semicolons. The deletion of computer search strings is based on a comparison with the «Computers» setting according to Windows rules (see ««Files» Setting»). If you simply need to delete all local network computer search strings (suitable for the most cases): 1. select Find Computer List; 2. check the Enable the Find Computer List cleaning box; 3. select «Computers» setting; leave its default value unchanged ­ *. Acronis PowerUtilities 19 As a result all computer search strings will be deleted from the registry. «Computers» setting On entering «Computers» setting value you can browse the search strings kept in the registry selected by Acronis PrivacyExpert. To do this click Show Computers. You will see the window with full and partial computer names searched for in the network. They will be deleted at the registry clean-up. 3.5 Executing Scheduled PC Clean-up Each PC clean-up variant of Acronis PrivacyExpert can be executed either manually or automatically as scheduled. Having set PC clean-up as a daily procedure, to be performed for example, at the end of workday before powering the PC off, you can be sure that all evidence of your PC and Internet activity will be reliably removed each day. Acronis PrivacyExpert features a built-in scheduler. 20 Chapter 3 : Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer